MOSCOW, June 16 Russian developers have come up with a device that can be fixed on the outer surface of damaged spacecraft and eliminate cracks in them, follows from the documents in the Rospatent database.
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"The invention relates to the field of cosmonautics, in particular to the production of thin films with the thermal energy of self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS), to eliminate microcracks on the surface of the body of spacecraft (SV)", the material says.
As follows from the description of the invention by scientists from the Institute of Structural Macrokinetics and Problems of Materials Science of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISMAN), it will be a cylinder, inside of which there will be an SHS charge and a spiral to initiate the synthesis and evaporation of the heated material.
The lower part of the device will have a double wall, in the hollow volume of which it will be possible to create a vacuum. Thus, the device will «stick» to the surface that needs to be repaired.
According to the developers, when the charge is heated, the consumable material will evaporate from it and settle in the area of the crack, clog it and form a continuous film on the surface of the spacecraft.
In addition to eliminating cracks, the device can also detect their presence. To do this, after installing the device on the surface of the spacecraft, an inert gas will be pumped into it. A decrease in pressure in the chamber will indicate that there is a crack at the installation site of the device.
In 2019, an air leak was recorded on the ISS. As the cosmonauts managed to find out, it happened in the intermediate chamber of the Russian Zvezda module. Later, a crack a few centimeters long was found there. She was sealed several times. Later it became known about the presence of a second crack, and then three more places of possible leakage. The astronauts sealed them.