Strange objects appear in video from space 0:36
(CNN) - Air may be leaking on the International Space Station, so a NASA astronaut and two cosmonauts will travel to the Russian segment over the weekend to study where the problem might be.
"The leak is still within segment specifications and does not present any immediate danger to the crew or the space station," according to NASA. Astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Ivan Vagner and Anatoly Ivanishin are on board.
While crew members experience comfortable pressure while living in the orbiting laboratory, the space station does experience small air leaks over time. Regular repressurization is made possible by nitrogen tanks that are included in cargo resupply missions that take them to the space station.
However, NASA and the agency's international partners discovered last September that the cabin air leak rate had increased slightly. They have been gathering information on this between spacewalks and spacecraft arrivals and departures, the agency said.
Once again, the rate has increased slightly.
This weekend's stay in the Russian segment will allow astronauts and their crews to locate the source of the leak and hopefully repair it.
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This means that all hatches on the space station will remain closed. Mission control will take note of the air pressure in each space station module to determine which module is filtering the most air.
NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, believe they will have the first results by the end of next week.
The Zvezda service module is spacious enough for the three crew members and has been inhabited by humans since the first crew arrived at the space station on November 2, 2000.
In the Russian segment they will have access to the Poisk mini-research module, as well as their Soyuz spacecraft.
Poisk, also called Mini-Research Module 2, includes a docking port for the Soyuz spacecraft, an area to prepare for spacewalks, power outlets, internal and external workstations, and additional space for science experiments.
Space station crews keep rotating
Cassidy, Vagner, and Ivanishin will depart the space station on October 21 and return to Earth, landing in Kazakhstan. The trio will have spent 195 days together on the space station. They launched toward the space station in April.
A week before that departure, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov will leave the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and dock at the space station.
NASA and SpaceX announced last week that the SpaceX Crew-1 mission will be launched to the space station on October 23, with NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, and Japanese space agency astronaut Soichi. Noguchi.
This mission relies on data reviews and NASA certification after NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 test flight. Demo-2 included the successful May 30 launch of NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the space station from Florida. They returned safely to Earth, landing on August 2 in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Demo-2 mission was the first test flight to include a crew for a commercially owned and operated space system, according to NASA. Once the SpaceX system is certified by NASA, it will be able to regularly send astronauts to the space station from the United States.
SpaceX prepares for its next manned launch 1:00This ends NASA's reliance on launches from Kazakhstan to reach the space station, although the agency will still send astronauts from the Baikonur cosmodrome.
If the Crew-1 mission launches in October as planned, this will allow NASA's SpaceX Crew-2 mission to depart next spring to the space station.
International Space StationNASA
