The solution
When an air leak got worse on the International Space Station in 2020, Russian cosmonauts came up with a not-so-high-tech solution, as NPR's Morning Edition put it: they broke open a tea bag and let the leaves float up to identify the source of the leak.
The trick leans on what weightlessness takes away. On Earth, loose particles settle and give away nothing; in orbit the leaves hang suspended, and the escaping air's current draws them toward the breach — exactly the logic of squeezing dish soap along a plastic pool liner and watching where the bubbles stream.
That was the whole report: no instrument package, no spacewalk, just pantry stock repurposed as a diagnostic tracer on a hundred-and-billions-dollar laboratory.
Why it worked
The hack costs literally nothing and uses inventory already aboard, against a problem that threatens a sealed habitat.
It turns microgravity from the obstacle into the instrument: leaves that would never reveal anything on Earth become perfect tracers in orbit.
NPR judged it newsworthy precisely because the highest-tech habitat humans have built was debugged with groceries.
What can be applied
When the environment breaks your usual diagnostic assumptions, invert them: the same absence of gravity that hides a leak also lets you trace it with whatever particles are in the cupboard.
Aftermath
NPR's 21 October 2020 segment reported the method as the way the crew identified the leak's source; the network item did not report the subsequent repair.
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