International Space Station (ISS) Low Pressure Intramodule Quick Disconnect Failures

An ISS internal Quick Disconnect (QD) coupling failure during proto-flight vibration testing of ISS regenerative Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS) hardware raised issues concerning the performance of the male QD housing seal design. The existing QD acceptance screening process does not address performance of redundant housing seals and therefore failure tolerance cannot be assured for hardware currently in service. The possibility of performance issues has large implications when considering that currently there are 399 similar units on orbit and approximately 1100 units on the ground integrated into flight hardware. Testing, analysis, and development of a plan to address this issue both for existing hardware and future hardware has been completed to assure system safety is not adversely affected. Implementation of this plan also involves coordination with the Nodes and Multi-Purpose Pressurized Logistics Module (MPLM) project offices, Regenerative ECLS Project, ISS Payloads, JAXA, ESA, and ISS Logistics and Maintenance.