air purifier eyed in space leak - small air purifier

Flight controllers suspect air purifiers on the international space station could leak and cause 5-year-
Old Rail complex
S. and Russian space officials on Tuesday stressed that the slow drop in air pressure is not a direct danger to the operation of the crew or outpost.
If the pressure drops to a dangerous low, astronaut Michael fall and astronaut Alexander calery can give up the space station in the dock and quickly return to Earth.
"We will take a very measured and methodical approach to this problem," said Mike Suffredini, station operations and integration manager.
"If it's actually a leak, we're not sure it's a leak, we have, oh, there's more than half a year on board to feed it, so we're not in a rush to overreact.
"On Monday and Tuesday, Foale and Kaleri checked the hatch, windows and valves of the entire space station using an ultrasonic leak detector, but found nothing suspicious.
Mission Control requested on Wednesday that they postpone additional inspections in order to review all data.
Friday, shooting protesters at Virginia's mother beach interrupted Harris, Russia's carbon emissions will be checked
Engineers think the carbon dioxide removal device may be the culprit.
If it discharges the air outside the ship then it will be replaced with on-
In the next week or two, the board will be on standby.
If not, the search will be expanded, and in order for astronauts to be able to access other suspicious parts, the wall panels will be removed and supplies will be transferred elsewhere and stacked together.
"Let's cross our fingers and we're narrowing the scope of this guy," Foale said . ".
Foale sounds as cheerful as ever.
"Well, you know, we do have a big problem on board," he sent a radio to the mission control center.
"Any regular sailing boat will chew gum on board to fix the bug, but we don't have gum.
Someone deleted it from our menu.
How can I fly in space without chewing gum?
Suffredini says the space station has lost 2 lbs of air a day for the past two weeks.
Usually in complex in about 34 pounds of air in 900 pounds of air disappear.
The space station has now dropped to 14.
The pressure per square inch is 2 pounds, Suffredini says, which is where the flight rules require replenishment.
However, the threshold for equipment failure is 13.
9 pounds per square inch, the actual cut-off point for systems and humans is about 10.
It's 2 pounds square inches, said soufridini.
Russia's old Mir space station is often plagued by air leaks.
Kaleri was a member of some of them on board and Foale was present when Mir was struck by a supply ship on 1997.
The cracked laboratory module must be sealed.
However, the International Space Station is larger than Mir and it may take longer to find a leak. If the carbon-
The carbon dioxide removal unit and other equipment are well inspected and the next step will be the closure of the hatch between Foale and KaleriS.
The Russian side of the space station is trying to isolate any leaks.
If that doesn't work, then each compartment is sealed one at a time.
If there are still no holes in this, then the more specific point isto-
A dot search will be conducted.
Although the first Test was around January.
2. the decrease and fluctuation of air pressure can be traced back to December. 22.
It coincides with the failure and final failure of the primary oxygen generator on board and may be related to the use of spare oxygen
Production tank.
The cans have just expired, but Russian space officials have re-identified them for a year.
NASA said the downward pressure could also be related to a sharp change in the amount of sunlight recently exposed to the space station, not to actual leaks.
No matter what the reason is, the problem comes up at a bad time.
Due to the Colombian Tragedy, NASA's space shuttle has been suspended indefinitely and there is no way to ship all the necessary spare parts.
Russian ships are too small to carry large equipment.
The crew had been reduced from 3 to 2 before the shuttle resumed.
Foale, 47, was the station commander on Tuesday. he moved in with Kaleri on October and lived 6-month stay.