The hiss of air escaping from a leaky car tire is no one’s favorite sound.
Even less pleasant? Hearing that hiss of escaping air 250 miles above Earth’s surface while inside the pressurized confines of the International Space Station.
According to Eric Madaras, an aerospace technologist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., if an air leak were to occur aboard the station, alarms would sound, and the astronauts would locate and correct the problem according to procedures. But with only the crew’s eyes and ears to go on, pinpointing the source of a leak could be tricky.
Madaras is trying to fix that problem. As the principal investigator for the Ultrasonic Background Noise Test (UBNT) he’s leading a study that potentially could help prevent a catastrophic loss of air pressure on a crewed spacecraft.