Astronauts take shelter on the International Space Station because of air leaks

Astronauts take shelter on the International Space Station because of air leaks

NASA ordered its astronauts to take refuge inside a docked SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and to prepare for potential evacuation of the International Space Station. But the crew returned to normal operations shortly afterward

Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) briefly took shelter and prepared for a potential evacuation because of worsening air leaks from a Russian-built module, a NASA spokesperson said today.

The leaks are thought to have arisen from microscopic cracks in a transfer tunnel referred to as the PrK, a small vestibule attached to the aft end of the Zvezda Service Module, which leads to a docking port for cargo spacecraft. Zvezda was the first fully Russian contribution to the ISS, and was installed by the country’s space agency Roscosmos in July 2000. Engineers first noticed the leaks in 2019, but despite multiple efforts across the years to seal them and identify their underlying cause, they have remained a chronic problem . As the leaks have continued, the orbital habitat now loses on the order of a pound of air per day.

“Following new leaks, Roscosmos has elected to proceed with a more extensive repair operation on Friday, June 5,” said NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens in a post on the social media platform X. “Out of an abundance of caution, NASA has directed all four of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-12 members and NASA astronaut Chris Williams to assume an elevated safety posture in the [SpaceX] Dragon spacecraft while the repair is underway.”

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In a statement released in Russian later in the day, Roscosmos officials wrote , “The situation poses no threat to the crew’s safety or onboard systems; pressure aboard the ISS remains stable and is being maintained at the nominal level,” according to a machine translation.

Astronauts regularly train to respond to a wide range of incidents that might pose a threat to the station and themselves, says George Nield, president of the company Commercial Space Technologies and a former member of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel. “NASA must always be prepared for its astronauts to use their Dragon spacecraft as a ‘lifeboat’ to rapidly return to Earth,” he says. “The increased pressure leak that was announced today is just a reminder that those events can happen at any time.”