The International Space Station, the first block of which was commissioned at the end of 1998, has been in orbit for more than 7, 7 thousand days. Its service life was previously planned to be completed in 2015-2016, but later the project participants (Russia, Canada, USA, Japan and ten states of the European Space Agency) extended it until 2020, and then until 2024. Last summer, the executive director of Roskosmos said that the question is that the ISS can continue to work until 2030, despite the fact that the station was originally designed for 15 years. However, international experts still find it difficult to answer the question of what is the future of the International Space Station.
As stated by the staff of the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, today the living modules of the ISS faced the risk of corrosion and subsequent depressurization. According to a study published in the journal Aerospace and Environmental Medicine, the cosmonauts found more than 130 vulnerabilities in the Russian section of the station alone.
"The maximum growth of microorganisms was more often found in the" cold "zones, in which there was a high probability of atmospheric moisture condensation," the scientists write.
To eliminate the risk of depressurization and control the residual thickness of the hull, specialists from the All-Russian Research Institute of Physical, Technical and Radio Engineering Measurements are developing special equipment, which they plan to test directly on board the ISS as part of the Emission project.
Recently, all kinds of leaks on the ISS and the spacecraft docked to it do not happen so rarely: in the summer of 2018, a crack was found in the skin of the Russian Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft, the origin of which was not immediately established. According to representatives of RSC Energia, according to the investigation, the hole in the hull was made deliberately, with the help of a drill.
In February 2019, liquid methane leaked outside the American segment of the ISS due to the failure of the RRM-3 experimental equipment, and in July, as a result of a breakdown in the water processing system, about ten liters of liquid spilled into the American module.
