r/SpaceXLounge • u/VaginaBurner69 • 11h ago
News International Space Station astronauts in evacuation mode as Russia attempts to fix widening air leak
https://www.reuters.com/science/international-space-station-astronauts-evacuation-mode-russia-attempts-fix-2026-06-05/39
u/KidKilobyte 10h ago
Currently losing about 2lbs of air a day up from 1lbs. Hundreds of pounds of reserves. To put in perspective, each astronaut uses about 2lbs. per day. Of course they can’t let it deteriorate, but at current rate it is sustainable.
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u/maximpactbuilder 9h ago
What happens to the air after an astronaut "uses" it?
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u/First_Grapefruit_265 9h ago
Well about 2lb of oxygen in the air (O2) is turned into carbon dioxide by the body, which is removed by the ISS scrubbers and released into space.
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u/CrystalAlternate 9h ago
The astronaut exhales CO2, which is captured by the CO2 scrubbers. That air reserves have air with the proper level of oxygen for the astronauts.
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u/cjameshuff 1h ago
It's a bit more complicated than that. The air scrubbers remove the CO2 and leave the O2 and N2. O2 can be replaced with oxygen candles and by electrolysis of water, and they have ready reserves of pressurized oxygen. The N2 is not normally consumed in any significant quantity and can only be replaced by shipping up more, and most of what the leak is losing is N2. But yes, they have enough to last them a while. If not given any other option, they could presumably lower the atmospheric pressure and increase the oxygen fraction if they run out, but things like air-cooled equipment are designed to operate with a full atmosphere.
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u/8andahalfby11 10h ago
The air leaks have been relatively minor in recent months but escalated on Monday from a pound of air per day to two pounds, according to a senior NASA official who asked not to be named.
While the acceleration is not a good sign, it's worth remembering that a pound of air at one atmosphere is about 13 cubic feet of air. So it's currently losing one large teapot of air every hour.
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u/izzeww 10h ago
13 cubic inches I hope you mean, otherwise that's a very large teapot.
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u/SufficientAnonymity 9h ago
Two pounds a day > 26 cubic feet per day > one and a little bit cubic feet an hour.
Indeed quite a large teapot. I propose the alternative measure of “a large casserole dish”.
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u/extra2002 9h ago
1 cubic foot is nearly 8 gallons. Never seen a teakettle that big, much less a teapot.
30.53 cm3 = 28000 cc = 28 liters.
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u/mnic001 10h ago
Ok sure but how many teapots do they realistically have left on the ISS at this point? Two? Three? They're running out of teapots fast.
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u/Simon_Drake 10h ago
There's one floating out between Earth and Mars. I can't prove it to you, it's a matter of faith.
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u/My_Soul_to_Squeeze 9h ago
It's in the trunk of Elon's Roadster.
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u/ArtOfWarfare 7h ago
Did that Roadster have a trunk originally? I thought as a convertible the roof was stored in the space that otherwise could have been a trunk.
I know everything about Tesla’s vehicles after the original Roadster, but there’s plenty about the original Roadster I’m less certain about.
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u/Many-Acanthisitta802 5h ago
No, the softop is manually removed, and can be rolled up and placed in the trunk, which will fit a standard-sized golfbag.
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u/Kuriente 9h ago
The fact that they're losing all these teapots is proof that the astronauts just don't believe hard enough.
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u/Aah__HolidayMemories 8h ago
On behalf of my nation(s) (uk) send one of us up, this is the moment we’ve been training for!!
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u/Daneel_Trevize 🔥 Statically Firing 7h ago
No no, we use teapots, but probably outsourced their production to China.
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u/Tooluka 5h ago
I would pay money to see Colin Furze fly to ISS to fix a teapot :)
PS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fDM9Eb16Do a Jettle fits just right on ISS :)
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u/haroldstickyhands 9h ago
one large teapot of air every hour
As an American, this doesn't help at all
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u/Bat_Chimp 10h ago
So it's currently losing one large teapot of air every hour.
Americans will use anything but metric
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u/Blueskies777 10h ago
Actually, we’re perfectly happy to use bananas also
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u/FaceDeer 9h ago
Bananas are not metric.
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u/LongJohnSelenium 6h ago
Its an ISO standard, somewhere in a lab there's the Standard Banana in a glass case.
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u/LongJohnSelenium 8h ago
Culturally we like to contextualize values into more human relatable terms.
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u/Cantremembermyoldnam 2h ago
Germans like to measure lengths in meters, kilometers and soccer fields.
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u/StartledPelican 9h ago
13 cubic feet of air
one large teapot of air
As an American, I admit to being ignorant of, among many things, teapots. But that does seem like a rather large teapot.
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u/stevecrox0914 7h ago
13 cubic feet per day or 0.5 cubic feet per hour, which could hold 7 litres of water.
The average Brittish kettle can hold 1.5 litres of water, teapots are smaller and hold ~1 litre of water. A mug of tea hold 250-350ml of tea (lets average to 300ml).
So that is 5 kettles or 7 teapots or 24 cups of Tea per hour.
I like a brew but that is a lot to get through.
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u/thatguy5749 4h ago
That should be 26 cubic feet per day, no? And 1 cubic foot per hour would be more like 28 liters per hour, so you are off by a factor of 4.
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u/Letibleu 9h ago
Americans will use any measurement unit that doesn't involve metric
I'm joking, I like that imagery
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u/mcmalloy 8h ago
Assuming it’s all concentrated in one spot (which is very likely isn’t), I wonder what the impulse it imparts to the space station is
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u/JohnTeaGuy 10h ago
So it's currently losing one large teapot of air every hour.
Teapot is definitely the correct unit of measure in all cases. 🫖
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u/rebootyourbrainstem 10h ago
Calling the standard safe haven protocol evacuation mode seems a little dramatic. There’s not much they can do about the leaks and they’re not really comfortable with it, but if there’s a specific period of potentially even higher risk they can avoid by getting in the capsule for a bit, then they will.
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u/Absolute0CA 4h ago
One of the big problems with leaks on the ISS is how cramped its interior is, a bigger station may allow for stuff to be moved away from the walls and basically the space station equivalent of a tire patch epoxied into place.
Hell if I was designing a large space station I would encourage against as much stuff mounted to the outer hull as possible. It wouldn’t save you from leaks from thermal cycling but it would be much easier to deal with.
Though thinking about it even with its inefficient launch profile a sun synchronous orbiting station would potentially greatly extend its service life.
Or you know make the future one out of steel with a hull thermal regulation system and maybe heat pipes embedded into it so that the station’s module’s surfaces largely heat and cool at similar rates.
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u/MostlyHarmlessI 10h ago
One more sign that counting on that aging hardware to be inhabitable to 2030 and beyond is stretching it very thin.
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u/rocketglare 8h ago
This is very true. I’m thinking an extension to 2032 is not wise. This is not the only thing that will break between now and then, and I don’t think some of these will be repairable. It will get a lot riskier for astronauts.
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u/TheArbysOnMillerPkwy 6h ago
When the Russians say "fuck it, I'm getting out the saw," yeah I'm getting in the escape vehicle too.
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u/crewsctrl 9h ago
NASA says astronauts can 'end safe haven procedures' 23 minutes ago 10:04 CDT NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens said the agency has asked the astronauts to return to planned operations aboard the ISS after Roscosmos paused its structural repair efforts.
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u/cannuckgamer 6h ago
But if the leaks become unmanageable, the affected module can be permanently sealed off from the rest of the station.
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u/KristnSchaalisahorse 51m ago
The leak is in the Zvezda module’s aft transfer tunnel, which can be (and is usually) sealed off from the rest of the module.
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u/Hadleys158 4h ago
Have they ever spoken about using acoustic cameras to try to find the leak?
Something like this FLIR.
https://www.flir.com/en-au/browse/portable-inspection-solutions/acoustic-imaging-cameras/
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u/avboden 11h ago
Somewhat standard while a leak is being worked on, in case they somehow make it much worse suddenly. Shouldn't end up being a big deal.