Roscosmos cosmonaut detachment commander Oleg Kononenko has been tasked with finding and localizing a leak in the Russian segment of the ISS station.
As Kononenko told TASS news agency as a special correspondent, it has been established that the air leak "is coming from the transfer chamber of the Zvezda service module". It "does not pose a threat to the safety of the crew", and "the flight continues as normal". However, the search situation is complicated by "the numerous equipment installed in the PrK and the small size of the cracks".
I am working together with ground specialists, there is a plan and methodology for the search, as well as all the necessary equipment. Calm, routine work that requires the correct technique for performing the search using fairly complex equipment, as well as attentiveness and patience.
Oleg Kononenko is a world record holder for the total number of hours spent in space. He has spent a total of more than 880 days in space. It is expected that after the completion of the expedition in September 2024, the total flight time of the cosmonaut will be 1,110 days, making him the first person in the world to have spent so long in space.
This is not the first incident for the cosmonaut during the last mission: in the fall of 2023, there was an accident on the Nauka module. Then NASA canceled spacewalks for astronauts until the cause of the accident was clarified, but Roscosmos did not. Kononenko and his partner Nikolai Chub spent almost eight hours in outer space, inspected and photographed the accident site and disconnected an additional heat exchanger from the external circuits of the module's thermal regime.