Oxygen leak on ISS, Russians say 'no reason to panic'

Depleting oxygen on the International Space Station (ISS) has alerted Russia’s space agency, which has now asked cosmonauts aboard to find out the possible leak at the earliest.

The mission control said the problem has to be solved soon as the space station is running out of its reserve supply of oxygen.

Earlier in August this year, the ISS had developed a small crack which resulted in drop in pressure. The Russian cosmonauts were then successful in fixing the leak, but the problem was not resolved. They suspect another leak in the module’s intermediate chamber.

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RT.com quoted ISS cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov while saying that there was no reason for panic as the crack was not critical.

There are no problems aboard. We’re working in a routine manner” to locate the leak, Vinogradov said. “It’s OK. We’ve been flying like this for half a year now,” Pavel Vinogradov said, according to RT.com

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Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, said, “We’re planning to send Progress cargo ship to the ISS in February. The situation is under control now.”

Rogozin said that there were reserves of oxygen on board and that a scheduled cargo delivery in February would include oxygen. “First, the station itself has oxygen reserves. That is, if it is necessary to replenish oxygen and nitrogen in the event of atmospheric pressure losses, we have such reserves. And we are going to send a cargo ship to the ISS in February. It already has a supply of oxygen,” Rogozin was quoted as saying by Russia’s TASS news agency. He added, “If necessary, we can use our relationship with NASA and send part of the cargo, including oxygen, with an American cargo ship.”

The International Space Station (ISS) is a modular space station in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA, Roscosmos, JAXA, ESA, and CSA. The ownership and use of the space station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements.

There are seven people on board the ISS, which includes four Americans, two Russians and a Japanese astronaut.