An air leak due to possible collision has made the Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) to deal with the issue.

They were able to successfully trace a small hole in a capsule that was utilized to deliver a new crew to the laboratory 400km above the Earth in June.

It is said that the damage was caused due to an impact of a high-speed rocky fragment flying through space.

According to Mission controllers from Houston, Texas and Moscow of Russia, all of the six-strong crew are completely out of danger.

Chances of tiny meteoroids colliding with the Space station are a permanent threat despite the fact that the station was made in such a way that it could withstand the constant bombardment from the dusty fragments that that passes above the Earth.

As a first measure, Mission controllers were ones to get the alert first by air pressure sensors on board the station.

When the incident occurred, the astronauts were asleep and as they woke up for their days work, they were instructed to search the leak point.

They successfully traced it out to the Russian Soyuz vehicle which is used to bring three crewmen to the station on 8 June, and among them is Europe’s Alexander Gerst who is about to take command of the outpost.

“Overnight and in the morning there was an abnormal situation – a pressure drop, an oxygen leak at the station,” chief of the federal space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

“A micro-fracture was found; most likely it is damage from the outside. The design engineers believe it is the result of a micrometeorite,” he said.

By running a finger over the surface, Germany’s Gerst confirmed the presence of the hole.

A sealant and tape were used as an immediate fix and cover the hole of a size of a couple of millimeters in diameter.

As of now, the astronauts are busy working with engineers over the ground to assess whether the hole needs robust repair.

Gerst of Germany and astronaut Serena Auñón of US and cosmonaut Sergei Prokopyev from Russia are all due to using the same affected Soyuz vehicle to return to Earth before the end of this year.

But the fact is that it was very fortunate that the puncture was in the craft’s orbital module, the very segment that is dumped before the Soyuz crew capsule marks its entry into the atmosphere.

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