NASA reported this Friday that it has ordered astronauts aboard the International Space Station to take refuge in their spacecraft and prepare for a possible evacuation, while a Russian crew attempts to repair an increasingly serious air leak in their part of the orbital laboratory.
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The four NASA Crew-12 mission astronauts on the station —two American astronauts, one French astronaut, and one Russian cosmonaut— received orders from NASA’s mission control center at 9:04 a.m. ET on Monday to enter their Crew Dragon spacecraft, docked to the station, and put on their spacesuits in case the air leak required an emergency evacuation, a NASA official said.
NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, the two main operators of the station, have debated for months about the cause and possible solutions to small air leaks aboard the Russian Zvezda service module, a key structure of the football-field-sized laboratory.
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Air leaks had been relatively minor in recent months, but on Monday they increased from half a kilogram of air per day to one kilogram, according to a senior NASA official who preferred to remain anonymous.
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According to NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens, “the Zvezda service module transfer tunnel, known as PrK, has suffered cracks and leaks for some time, problems that Roscosmos has tried to mitigate as much as possible to date. These cracks have always been a concern for NASA, which monitors them very closely. NASA and Roscosmos have been working to determine the root cause of the cracks, and Roscosmos manages the problem through operational mitigation measures and periodic partial repairs. Following the appearance of new leaks, Roscosmos has decided to carry out a more extensive repair operation on Friday, June 5. As a precaution, NASA has ordered the four members of the SpaceX Crew-12 mission and NASA astronaut Chris Williams to adopt an elevated safety posture in the Dragon spacecraft while the repair is being carried out. We continue to collaborate with our Russian counterparts, along with the rest of the international community supporting the space station, to find a definitive solution.”
The affected module acts as the central core and main habitable space of the Russian segment of the station, providing life support, propulsion systems, and rest areas. It was the third element of the ISS to be put into orbit and the first to offer accommodation, a life support system, and electrical power distribution, data processing, flight control, and propulsion systems. So, as soon as astronaut Ed Lu and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko connected the power, video, and data cables on September 11, 2000, the ISS became habitable.
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