The International Space Station, which has been in service for nearly 10 years, is in turmoil. The air leakage problem that has lasted for 5 years has become increasingly serious. NASA experts are worried that the situation may worsen, catastrophic failure may occur, or even cause the space station to disintegrate. For this reason, they have to start preparing an emergency evacuation plan. NASA's report states, the International Space Station currently has 4 cracks and as many as 50 worrying hidden dangers. The air leakage exceeds the normal standard by about 0.9-1.1 kilograms per day. In April this year, it was as high as about 1.7 kilograms per day.
In recent months, Russian cosmonauts have used sealants and patches to cover all known cracks, reducing daily air leaks by about a third, but they have still not stopped completely.
Obviously, this showsThere are cracks that remain undiscovered, or worse, new cracks are appearing.
NASA has already had to raise the risk level of the International Space Station to the highest level and admitted that because the cracks are often small and invisible to the naked eye, and the space station has a complex structure with dense brackets and pipes in many areas, it is impossible to inspect them one by one.
At present, the air leakage problem on the International Space Station is likely to occur in the transfer channel between the Russian Zvezda service module and the cargo spacecraft.
However, the United States believes that the root cause involves mechanical stress, residual stress, environmental exposure, etc., and even defects in the materials or workmanship of the transfer channel, which may endanger the structural integrity of the Zhejiang service module.
Russia believes that it is metal fatigue caused by various small vibrations, but there is no possibility of a disintegration disaster.
It can be said that the International Space Station is too old and has been overwhelmed. After the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Russia and the United States only maintained reluctant cooperation.
Russia has planned to withdraw from the International Space Station by 2028, and the United States has promised to persist until 2031.
Various circumstances have forced the United States to consider the safe evacuation of astronauts, such as requiring that the problematic transfer channel must remain sealed unless a spacecraft is docked.
NASA also required the docked Crew Dragon spacecraft to temporarily add a "tray seat" in the cargo area so that one more astronaut could sit in the event of an emergency evacuation.
The Manned Dragon spacecraft is designed to have 7 seats, but for safety reasons, there are only 4 official seats. The currently docked ship will pick up the two astronauts from the Crew-9 mission in February next year, as well as the two American astronauts who are still stranded in space due to the failure of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft.
For them, the Crew-9 spacecraft only carried two people when it launched, leaving two empty seats.