"NASA’s Robotic External Leak Locator (RELL) is a robotic, remote-controlled tool that helps mission operators detect the location of an external leak and rapidly confirm a successful repair. 
    … Two instruments working in sync give RELL its ammonia-detecting superpowers. … Mass spectrometer & Ion vacuum pressure gauge"

I'm clearly not understanding what they're trying to say here. If _one_ leak was sealed, but the air was "escaping elsewhere", it would still be a leak, causing pressure readings to drop.

Naively, I would assume that there are airlocks between the different sections of the ISS. I would also assume that they would close these airlocks while doing the kind of work they are doing to repair the leaks.

So, assuming I'm right (and my assumptions might be wrong,) why do the astronauts need to shelter?

Obviously they can't, it looks like an obvious solution they couldn't have missed. But I wonder why it is impossible to do.

I expected better from the BBC.

>> "SOMEDAY, THE international Space Station will descend, but if you're frightened at the prospect of a million-pound hunk of metal falling out of the sky, take heart. NASA does have a plan to decommission the space station eventually without creating havoc. The European Space Agency is planning to build three expendable space vehicles by 2003: two of them will ferry propellant, the other will force the station to land in a designated area. Called an automated transfer vehicle (ATV), the craft will be unmanned, similar to the Russian Progress resupply vehicle but larger, with enough thrust to nudge the entire station down in a single piece-a cheaper and safer alternative to hauling pieces of the station down in multiple trips. Roughly 90 percent of the station will be cinder by the time it reaches Earth's atmosphere; a Pacific splashdown is the plan.-Gunfan Sinha"

> Astronauts told to return to International Space Station after sheltering over air leak repairs.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48413273

For example: "The space station is made up of Russian and US segments, and there are modules from the European and Japanese space agencies too." It feels like this sentence is inserting some points, but is lacking in authorial intent. Is the intent to say the station is largely Russian and US, or to say the station has more than two partners? Probably an okay sentence, but still feels like a stone in the shoe.

It's a hot take but I do think the US should be more appreciative of Russia's longstanding contributions to the ISS and other space projects of international cooperation and factor that into sanctions decisions. We do need their help as much as they need ours in space, and the fact that they are still helping us despite our treatment of them speaks volumes about their leaders' character.

Rumors are that Elon gets spaceX to buy tesla so tele-operated Optimus robots do the hard space work from now on. Not a bad idea per se but I’m not educated on the topic. Curiosity has me asking if we really want humans to go to mars or in space at all.