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International Space Station Leak Plugged - With Finger
A leak that threatened the survival of crew in the International Space Station was thankfully discovered and plugged.
According to this report, an ESA astronaut literally plugged the leak with his finger.
(ISS astronaut plugs leak with finger)
After a morning of investigations, the crew reported that the leak was isolated to a hole about two millimeters in diameter in the orbital compartment, or upper section, of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft attached to the Rassvet module of the Russian segment of the station.Flight controllers at their respective Mission Control centers in Houston and Moscow worked together with the crew to effect a repair option in which Soyuz commander Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos used epoxy on a gauze wipe to plug the hole identified as the leak source. As the teams were discussing options, flight controllers in Moscow performed a partial increase of the station’s atmosphere using the ISS Progress 70 cargo ship’s oxygen supply. Flight controllers in Houston are continuing to monitor station’s cabin pressure in the wake of the repair.
Update 28-Mar-2026: Science fiction authors recognized long ago that tiny objects flying a high speed were more dangerous than the huge asteroids of the movies. This quote is from Through the Meteors (1930) by LH Morrow:
"It is probably true that we have just seen one of the largest meteors ever known," Halpin said as we strode down the hill toward the house. As I looked at him, again that inscrutable smile hovered about his lips. "But as I have remarked before, no such large body ever brought Professor Moltsi to grief. He could have side-stepped such a formidable thing. What the space flyer has most to fear is those swarms of meteoroids - millions of them no larger than a marble or a pin-point - that surround the earth and close it in like a gigantic, moving curtain. These celestial missiles plunging along at the incredible speed of seven to twenty miles a second at a distance of a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles above the earth, constitute the greatest menace against successful space flying. You might say that man is imprisoned by them: that nature has set them about the earth as sentinels to keep man from roaming off into space and thus destroying himself."
End update.
Science fiction writers had a few ideas, and even anticipated that astronauts might plug leaks with their own bodies. For example, Robert Heinlein's puckish 1948 short story Gentlemen, Be Seated:
There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel, the size and shape of toy balloons. They seemed to displace exactly their own weight of air; they floated without displaying much tendency to rise or settle. Konski batted one out of his way and answered me before I could ask."This piece of tunnel was pressurized today," he told me.
"These tag-alongs search out stray leaks. They're sticky inside. They get sucked up against a leak, break, and the goo gets sucked in, freezes and seals the leak."
(Read more about Heinlein's tag-alongs)
Also, for an even earlier reference, take a look at the entry for the smoke jets from Leo Zagat's 1932 short story The Great Dome of Mercury
Via NASA blog.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 8/25/2018)
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