Russia: hole in a space station may have been made intentional

moscow - The small hole that was discovered last week in the wall of the ISS space station may have been made intentional. The Russian space agency Roskosmos is researching this. It may be that someone on earth has done something, says the top man of Roskosm, Dimitri Rogozin, against Russian state media. According to Rogozin, it is even possible that someone in space has consciously sabotaged the station. However, it could also have been a human error.

The job was with a Soyuz vessel with which a German, an American and a Russian had gone to the ISS in June. At that moment there were already two Americans and one Russian at the station. According to state media, all manned and unmanned vessels will soon be checked.

State press agency RIA Novosti thinks the hole was accidentally created. An employee of manufacturer Energia would have been shot with a drill when building the vessel. A source within Energia says that the employee quickly sealed the hole with a kind of resin, but did not say anything about it to his bosses. The resin would have disappeared in space.

The flight control had noticed last week that the air pressure in the ISS dropped a little. The six people on board were not in danger and could therefore continue to sleep. When they got up, they were informed and started searching for the hole. When that was found, the hole was taped with tape and now it is completely sealed with a resin. If nothing had been done, the ISS would have been without oxygen in eighteen days and all crew members could have suffocated.

The hole was two millimeters wide. Initially it was thought of a collision of space noise, but Russia is now ruling it out.