The general director of the state corporation “Roskosmos” Dmitry Rogozin on Saturday, December 19, promised to “cure” the problems of the International Space Station (ISS).
“We work with the crew, I myself am the head of the commission for flight tests of manned systems and complexes. We will cure these problems. <...> The station, in its old models, is starting to tell us little by little: “It’s time for me to retire,” he said during a visit to the Polyot production association.
The head of Roskosmos recalled that the station modules, made back in Soviet times and designed for 15 years, serve much longer, therefore, some old ISS structures have problems associated with “metal fatigue” and so on.
Earlier that day, it became known that an air leak was discovered on the ISS in the Russian Zvezda module. It was noted that the situation is complicated by the fact that the supply of oxygen for replenishing the air loss at the station is coming to an end. Rogozin, in turn, stressed that this situation is under control.
The Mission Control Center asked the ISS crew to help find the place of the air leak, and also asked to put bags and covers on various places of the module in order to narrow the area of the leak search. Until the leak was discovered, it was suggested to keep the chamber permanently closed to save air.
On December 12 at the International Space Station (ISS) the Russian system for obtaining oxygen “Electron-VM” again failed. The shutdown was due to low pressure in the system and coincided in time with the shutdown of the vacuum cleaner, which was used for cleaning on the Russian segment of the Zvezda station.
The problems with Electron began amid an air leak on the ISS in October. The device failed three times that month. The system developer, chief designer of NIIkhimmash, Aleksey Kochetkov, assured that the breakdowns were not related to marriage.
In early October, the space station crew recorded instrument readings that record air leaks. On November 13, it became known that the crack is about 4.5 cm long.