Russia reports pressure drop in space station service module

MOSCOW, July 31 (Reuters) – The head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Saturday that the pressure in a Russian service module on the International Space Station had dropped as a result of an air leak.

The pressure had fallen over a two-week period before a Russian research module, the Nauka, knocked the station out of control when its engines fired shortly after docking on Thursday, but Roscosmos chief, Dmitry Rogozin said the two events were unrelated.

The pressure drop is the result of a known minor air leak in an isolated transfer chamber of the Zvezda service module and the pressure will be increased within the next 24 hours, Roscosmos said in a statement.

“It was an expected and not ‘brutal’ drop in the still problematic Zvezda and it is unrelated to the research module,” Rogozin tweeted in response to media reports.

The pressure in the service pod dropped on July 29, the day the Nauka research pod docked, to about a third of its level on July 14, but would be increased, Rogozin tweeted.

The air leak in the Zvezda module, which provides crew accommodation and life support systems, was detected last year. It presented no danger to the crew but persisted despite attempts to repair it by plugging the cracks.

Russia said on Friday that a software glitch and possible lack of human attention was at the root of an emergency caused by inadvertently re-ignited jet thrusters from the Nauka research module. Read more

The Russian crew entered the search pod on Saturday after the air was tested and cleaned, Rogozin tweeted.

Russia held a scientific council meeting on Saturday to discuss the future use of the Russian segment of the space station, which was put into orbit in 1998 and is expected to operate until 2028.

“The Chief Builders Council noted after reviewing the current state of the Russian segment of the ISS that the use of the Russian segment of the ISS after 2024 creates additional risks due to aging equipment,” said Roscosmos.

Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Giles Elgood

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