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Astronauts told to return to ISS after sheltering over air leak repairs
- 866-RON-0-FEZ 5mo agoDupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48413273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48413273
- jader201 5mo agoProbably better to link to the article, rather than a thread that has 0 comments. https://www.reuters.com/world/nasa-live-international-space-station-astronauts-prepare-possible-evacuation-due-2026-06-05/ https://www.reuters.com/world/nasa-live-international-space-...
- Polizeiposaune 5mo ago"The air leaks escalated on Friday from a pound of air per day to two pounds, according to a senior NASA official who asked not to be named. Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev were using a saw to break into an area where they believed they could access the crack leaking air, the NASA official said. NASA officials disagreed with this method, the NASA official added, prompting mission control in Houston to order safe-haven procedures."
- 866-RON-0-FEZ 5mo agoWhy would I steal a link from someone who submitted a story first and take credit? I know it's normal behavior in tech to stab everyone in the back but...
- cucumber3732842 5mo agoSuper thin margin stuff like space flight only "works" because they cross their Ts and dot their Is. There's probably no danger here, the repairs will probably go fine and be uneventful, but you gotta treat every situation like it's the real deal because otherwise it'll get you when it does happen.
- ggm 5mo agoAgree to precautionary principle. Disagree to certainty of fixing because this is a long standing leak which just doubled in intensity: either it got bigger, or there are more. Either way, we have no reason to be optimistic a bigger leak problem has a faster MTTR or even triage.
- plopz 5mo agoWho is the "they" in your post? The ISS is a bit interesting because its a cooperation between NASA and Roscosmos.
- jmount 5mo agoI have to say worrying about the provenance of writing has made me a grumpier reader. For example: "The space station is made up of Russian and US segments, and there are modules from the European and Japanese space agencies too." It feels like this sentence is inserting some points, but is lacking in authorial intent. Is the intent to say the station is largely Russian and US, or to say the station has more than two partners? Probably an okay sentence, but still feels like a stone in the shoe.
- kylecazar 5mo agoYeah, this is their "live reporting" feed, where updates and context get posted about an in-progress event. I don't think you'll find that type of language in the more traditionally published/edited articles.
- ShinyLeftPad 5mo agoSeeing nothing wrong with it. If journalist follows inverted pyramid, it starts with crucial facts and at the end it can be mostly supplementary information. Seeing this is about "International Space Station", this adds context to why it is called "international" for an ordinary person.
- Polizeiposaune 5mo agoIt's complicated. The US Orbital Segment of the ISS consists of modules funded by and built in the US, ESA/Europe, and Japan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Orbital_Segment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Orbital_Segment Several of the US modules were built in Europe by Thales Alenia Space and were transferred to the US in exchange for the US launching the European modules on the Space Shuttle.
- summa_tech 5mo agoI think it's an attempt to express that the station consists of only two segments: Russian (ROS) and US (USOS), but the US invited its allies to work together on its segment. So parts of the USOS are made in Europe, Canada and Japan, and generally lifted to space by the US, usually on the Space Shuttle. (All this was pretty lucid of the US, but obviously the Russians did no such thing on their side. The Japanese even managed to get an ISS resupply mission launched on their own vehicle, which is no small achievement, and the ESA did a bunch of good science. And what would space be without the Canadarm :-)
- Markoff 5mo agoit was already cancelled and they can return back to normal operations
- SoftTalker 5mo agoImagine something like this happening halfway to Mars and zero chance of escaping, getting any help or parts sent to you.
- willy_k 5mo agoThere is less debris around on the way to mars and this is a known and worsening for the ISS due to its age.
- ShinyLeftPad 5mo agoDebris from what? Satellite debris get in that orbit?
- vel0city 5mo agoDebris from space. Lots of rocks are constantly falling from space from all over. Sometimes they're big and make pretty lights in the sky as they fall, often they are practically invisible.
- pixl97 5mo agoMost of the things that will be a common danger (that is too small to track) are tiny pieces of stuff. Think paint chips and sand grain sized objects. These can be from things that came off rockets and ships, and things we've left behind like experiments and satellites. When these tiny things intercept you at many kilometers per second it can be dramatic. Anything larger, say a lost screw driver, would punch thru the ISS like it wasn't even there leading to some ugly consequences.
- wat10000 5mo agoBits of spacecraft falling off (Challenger's windshield was famously cracked by a paint chip), debris from satellite collisions, even anti-satellite weapons tests.
- harimau777 5mo agoI did an internship at NASA. What they told me is that anything larger than a golf ball they track while anything smaller than, I think they said a penny, is too small to do damage. The problem is debris that's in between the two. In that case they only get a relatively short warning (it's been a while but I think it was on the order of a couple hours). The ISS can dodge debris by adjusting the height of its orbit.
- gwbas1c 5mo agoMaybe someone who knows more about the ISS than I do can answer this: Naively, I would assume that there are airlocks between the different sections of the ISS. I would also assume that they would close these airlocks while doing the kind of work they are doing to repair the leaks. So, assuming I'm right (and my assumptions might be wrong,) why do the astronauts need to shelter?
- bmelton 5mo agoWell, I won't claim to know the answer, but "please do not move between different airlocked sections while this work is underway" sounds a lot like the definition of "shelter" to me
- gpm 5mo agoIn this case, per the article, "shelter" meant "shelter in a capsule capable of returning to earth and put on the spacesuits that you wear during return to earth". I.e. leaving the actual ISS structure entirely.
- bmelton 5mo agoI would guess they're worried about breaking something, but thanks for the clarification (and apologies for not having RTFA)
- lazide 5mo agoRepairing a leak with an uncertain cause could be at high risk of catastrophic decompression if it was caused by certain types of corrosion or stress.
- himata4113 5mo agoCompression loss can lead to a decompression of sorts if I had to guess... it is a vaccum out there. The force from a decompression can yield a chain reaction or strongly disrupt the entire station.
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- kaicianflone 5mo agoI don’t have a dog in the fight but it’s super scary to think about for the astronauts and their families. This issue’s been going on for a while now. Surprised that there’s not more AI or robotics that could be utilized for such cases. Rumors are that Elon gets spaceX to buy tesla so tele-operated Optimus robots do the hard space work from now on. Not a bad idea per se but I’m not educated on the topic. Curiosity has me asking if we really want humans to go to mars or in space at all.
- post-it 5mo agoElon wants a lot of things that aren't happening.
- ck2 5mo agoDo they have things like Oxygen Candles or can those not be used in space?
- mandevil 5mo agoThey were definitely used on Mir- in 1997 one caught fire, blocking the crew's access to their escape Soyuz, though they put it out. It looks like NASA helped redesign it to be safer, creating the modern Solid Fuel Oxygen Generator (SFOG) system still in use on the ISS as the backup.
- focusedone 5mo agoYes and I believe they do regularly use them on the Russian side, at least. They were also the cause of a fire on Mir. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_EO-23 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_EO-23
- sam1714 5mo agoCandles are useful when oxygen has been consumed because of respiration or a fire. They're not useful in a leak. Conservation of mass: if a cubic meter of air escapes, that's 1.25 kg, and you need at least that much in candles. (You actually need 2 kg because the candle isn't solid oxygen) There's ultimately 1.2 t of atmosphere on the ISS. This will also result in a pure oxygen atmosphere, which is dangerous. You need nitrogen.
- ordu 5mo agoCan't they just get things out of the module and paint it fresh? Maybe with some special paint, or with several layers of a paint? Obviously they can't, it looks like an obvious solution they couldn't have missed. But I wonder why it is impossible to do.
- echoangle 5mo agoSome problems i can see with that: It might be hard to access the actual pressure hull from the inside (there's probably insulation and padding on top) If you use paint, you somehow have to get rid of the solvent in it when it dries, which might be a problem when painting a whole module
- Lalabadie 5mo agoAir filtration is one of the hardest things do deal with in space. I don't know what solvents would do, but I remember that astronauts' bone density loss in space means there are challenges around managing the significant amount of calcium captured by the air scrubbers in the ISS.
- PaulHoule 5mo agoWouldn't the calcium go out in your urine?
- schiffern 5mo agoYes. It was the urine processor that had problems with excess calcium, not the air scrubber. https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/f8ca865b-1d15-4689-841b-60d57d119016/content https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/f8ca865b-1...
- Lalabadie 5mo agoAppreciate the correction!
- 5mo ago
- js2 5mo agoAs of 11 minutes ago, the headline is now the opposite of that submitted: > Astronauts told to return to International Space Station after sheltering over air leak repairs.
- caminante 5mo agoOh, so it's a live blog with updates and a dynamic headline.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- mynameisvlad 5mo agoIt has "Live Updates" in big bold text as one of the first and most prominent lines on the page so... yes? Is that a problem? Publications have had live-updating articles for things ongoing for years. This seems both entirely reasonable and normal, and I'm not sure what the concern or issue is.
- red_Seashell_32 5mo agoAs per submission guidelines: > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. So, even if you use original title, once "Live Update" article changes, it might seem that submission did not use original title.
- mynameisvlad 5mo agoThe point of the rule is to not editorialize, not to keep an always-updating title.
- munk-a 5mo agoGiven that the title was highly accurate at time of submission perhaps a moderator will update the title further but the submission seems to be inline with all the guidelines. This is actually also a case where I think it wouldn't be unappreciated to deviate a bit from the article title to something like Live Updates: Astronauts on ISS told...
- Magi604 5mo agoIs this another potential OceanGate scenario (SpaceGate?), where one day the ISS just blasts apart suddenly and without warning and the occupants are ejected into the vacuum of space?
- QuotedForTruth 5mo agoThere are of course potential failures, but not quite as violent as oceans gate. There is 1 atm of pressure difference between the inside and outside of the ISS. At titanic depths the pressure difference between inside and outside of the submarine was approximately 400 atm. Thats why the ISS can have small leaks like this that are a problem but not catastrophic like they would be in a deep sea submarine.
- lapetitejort 5mo agoThe differences in engineers for space versus the ocean are fascinating. You'd think space stations and submarines would be interchangeable because they both deal with pressure differentials, right? Wrong. They'd fail in fascinatingly different ways within minutes or hours in the opposite environment
- MPSimmons 5mo agoProfessor Hubert Farnsworth: Dear Lord! That's over 150 atmospheres of pressure! Fry: How many atmospheres can the ship withstand? Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Well, it's a space ship, so I'd say anywhere between zero and one.
- macintux 5mo agoXKCD tackled that question in a video: https://youtu.be/EsUBRd1O2dU https://youtu.be/EsUBRd1O2dU
- userbinator 5mo agoThere is 1 atm of pressure difference between the inside and outside of the ISS. For comparison, a can of soda has around 2-3 atm depending on its temperature.
- varjag 5mo agoNasa said the segment had suffered from cracks and leaks I expected better from the BBC.
- kridsdale1 5mo agoDo you mean the Bbc?
- cwillu 5mo agoNo, because you don't pronouce that as “the bibs”, you say the letters.
- rafram 5mo agoHmm? If you mean the capitalization, that’s BBC style.
- varjag 5mo agoThat sounds weird. They write "Nasa" mid-sentence too, yet keep other acronyms (ISS) intact.
- sixhobbits 5mo agoSome style guides distinguish between an acronym (Nasa, say the word as it's written) and initialism (ISS, say each letter)
- rafram 5mo agoYes, including the BBC’s: https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide/all#:~:text=our%20style%20is%20to%20use%20lower%20case%20with%20an%20initial%20cap%20for%20acronyms%20where%20you%20would%20normally%20pronounce%20the%20set%20of%20letters%20as%20a%20word https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide/all#:~:text=our%20style...
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- blastro 5mo agois this a play for the space x ipo? we need a new iss?
- BobbyTables2 5mo agoThey should keep some FlexSeal up there !
- dotdev_prem 5mo agoHow the air leaks there, from whom side is the problem is, from astronauts side's or the company's?
- rconti 5mo ago> After multiple inspections and sealant applications, Nasa reported in January that pressure readings suggested a stable configuration had been reached - though there remained uncertainty about whether the leak had truly been sealed or whether air was simply escaping elsewhere. I'm clearly not understanding what they're trying to say here. If _one_ leak was sealed, but the air was "escaping elsewhere", it would still be a leak, causing pressure readings to drop.
- gmueckl 5mo agoI read it as an inability to measure the leak rate immediately after the repair. If the rate is slow, measuring it takes time.
- scheme271 5mo agoIt could be that the instruments were looking at the differential pressure. E.g. the pressure in that section compared to another. A leak elsewhere would throw off the comparison.
- Kye 5mo agoIt's an almost 30 year old nearly 500 ton structure subjected to radiation, bombardment by starstuff and debris, the stresses of docking and undocking, of boosts, and of constant heating and cooling as it passes in and out of the sun. Getting a clear picture of the comings and going of gasses is probably not easy.
- saltcured 5mo agoTake away the mass figure, and it happens to all of us eventually ;-)
- whycome 5mo agoAre there things that happen on board that increase the pressure - eg fermentation whether it’s experiment or in humans?
- lostfiddler 5mo ago
- tedd4u 5mo agoI found this interesting: NASA RELL (Robotic External Leak Detector) [1]. "NASA’s Robotic External Leak Locator (RELL) is a robotic, remote-controlled tool that helps mission operators detect the location of an external leak and rapidly confirm a successful repair. … Two instruments working in sync give RELL its ammonia-detecting superpowers. … Mass spectrometer & Ion vacuum pressure gauge" [1] (PDF fact sheet from NASA) https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/rell-factsheet-print-041519.pdf?emrc=68bc4cba7c1bb https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/rell-factshe...
- duxup 5mo agoI’m imagining the robots from Silent Running 1972.
- Crunchified 5mo ago...or the scutters on Red Dwarf.
- hammock 5mo agoI’m imagining a pool snail
- Waterluvian 5mo ago“What is my purpose?” “You crawl around outside and smell for astronaut wizz.”
- p-e-w 5mo agoOne thing that’s rarely discussed about spaceflight is that for the foreseeable future, it will have to happen without the animals that humans rely upon on Earth. I think this will expose just how strong that reliance is in some areas.
- totetsu 5mo agoI wonder about what happens to gut micro biomes
- Kye 5mo agoI remember reading about the ISS in the May 1998 issue of Popular Science, a full issue about the station. They were getting ready to launch the first module. Every time bad news happens, I think about this part (from a PDF I hang on to): >> "SOMEDAY, THE international Space Station will descend, but if you're frightened at the prospect of a million-pound hunk of metal falling out of the sky, take heart. NASA does have a plan to decommission the space station eventually without creating havoc. The European Space Agency is planning to build three expendable space vehicles by 2003: two of them will ferry propellant, the other will force the station to land in a designated area. Called an automated transfer vehicle (ATV), the craft will be unmanned, similar to the Russian Progress resupply vehicle but larger, with enough thrust to nudge the entire station down in a single piece-a cheaper and safer alternative to hauling pieces of the station down in multiple trips. Roughly 90 percent of the station will be cinder by the time it reaches Earth's atmosphere; a Pacific splashdown is the plan.-Gunfan Sinha"
- bamboozled 5mo agoI feel like NASA won’t be sling this anymore…
- CableNinja 5mo agoThis never happened though, and as a result the ISS stayed up for longer. SpaceX is now the group that will deorbit it, as one big chunk
- roryirvine 5mo agoThough ATV did fulfil the resupply mission (five times, rather than three) in 2008-14. It's now used as the basis of the Orion service module, whilst ISS resupply is currently done by Cygnus and Cargo Dragon on the American side and Progress on the Russian.
- photonair 5mo agoDoes someone know if push come to shove, do they have a ready to go escape pod or ship to go back Earth anytime in an emergency? How many backups do they get?
- Arch-TK 5mo agoThe rule is that at all times enough return vessels must be docked to the ISS for everyone on board. These are usually the same vessels they used to get up to the station. This has the consequence that if they need to re-dock one of the vessels (for whatever reason) all the astronauts that would normally use that vessel must board it for that menuvre. Just in case it fails to dock again. And they don't normally have spares. IIRC, this is a good video on the topic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=82YHM12n2JI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=82YHM12n2JI
- Polizeiposaune 5mo agoThere is spare capacity on the Crew Dragon for an extra astronaut or maybe two on return. They'd rather not have to use it but NASA took steps to enable it when Soyuz MS-22 suffered a coolant leak in 2022 and had to be returned empty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_MS-22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_MS-22
- avmich 5mo agoFor every human onboard ISS there is always place in the docked spaceship. Exceptions: when spaceships break, replacements are usually sent - like, when Soyuz lost coolant or Starliner was considered too unreliable. While waiting for replacements, those ploblematic spacecrafts still serve as lifeboats, except maybe Crew Dragons can carry more people than those 4 they usually carry...
- KlutzySofa 5mo agoCrew Dragon can do 7 astronauts, but NASA only wanted SpaceX to build it for 4. The contingency for the Starliner astronauts in case of an emergency was to strap them down in the cargo area. Which wouldnt be optimal, but better than certain/likely death onboard the ISS.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- steno132 5mo agoIt's really hypocritical for the US to cooperate with Russia on space, even take their help on repairing the ISS, only to sanction them and even their trading partners for buying their oil. It's a hot take but I do think the US should be more appreciative of Russia's longstanding contributions to the ISS and other space projects of international cooperation and factor that into sanctions decisions. We do need their help as much as they need ours in space, and the fact that they are still helping us despite our treatment of them speaks volumes about their leaders' character.
- testuser2025 5mo ago[dead]
- ionwake 5mo ago[flagged]