In one of the compartments of the ISS, the pressure dropped by a third in two days

According to cosmonaut Sergei Ryzhikov, on Friday, February 26, after the hatches in the Zvezda module compartment were closed, the pressure in the transition compartment was 728 mm. Now it reaches only 465 mm, the hatch to the Zvezda module compartment is closed. The astronauts will continue to measure the pressure in the compartment every four hours using a manovacuum meter, Interfax reports.

Today, March 1, the ISS crew plans to start to seal the first of the detected cracks. Earlier, the first crack, about four centimeters in size, was discovered last fall, 2020. with the help of tea leaves and repaired temporary means. The rate of pressure drop after that decreased, but the problem was not completely solved, the crew has been looking for other places for air leaks since then. However, we can only talk about their location presumably. On February 24, the ISS crew could not repair one of these cracks.

In August last year, the head of the Russian space corporation Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, said that the air leak on the ISS is insignificant and barely perceptible by instruments. According to Vladimir Solovyov, flight director for the Russian segments of the ISS, the rate of air leakage until recently was thousands of times less than critical. However, on February 17, the Progress MS-16 cargo spacecraft delivered a powerful microscope to the ISS, which is planned to be used to identify all leaks. Also, materials were sent to orbit from Earth to seal the cracks.