Astronaut Michael Foale has apparently located the small air leak that has bedeviled the international space station for the past three weeks.NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston on Sunday suspended impending plans to lock down the entire station, close the hatches between its major modules and monitor the air pressure in each one separately.“The news couldn’t have come at a better time,” Mission Control advised the crew in their pre-sleep briefing on Sunday afternoon. “It looks like we found our culprit.”When the crew jokingly asked for the rest of the day off, Houston responded, “Not so fast!” But after completing a short discussion of the next day's activities, Foale and his Russian shipmate, Alexander Kaleri, were told to begin their pre-sleep activities and not to expect further communications until the morning.The leak appears to be at the main window in the U.S.-built Destiny laboratory module. A flexible cable called a vacuum jumper, used to help equalize air pressure across the multipaned window, showed telltale signs of leakage where the hose entered a steel harness at the edge of the window.

The structure can be capped off with equipment already aboard the station. It can be entirely replaced later in the year when the needed spare part is sent up on a robotic Russian cargo ship.


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