Astronauts aboard the International Space Station were ordered to temporarily shelter in place on Friday amid ongoing air leaks on the floating space laboratory.
In a statement posted to X, NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens said that “out of an abundance of caution,” all four members of NASA’s Crew-12 mission — NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway and Jessica Meir, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — and NASA astronaut Chris Williams were told to shelter in the Crew Dragon spacecraft docked to the station while members of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos attempted to fix the leaks.
About 90 minutes later, Stevens said that Roscosmos had “paused” its structural repair efforts, and NASA instructed the crew members inside the Dragon spacecraft to “end the safe haven procedures and return to planned operations aboard the International Space Station.”
According to Reuters, NASA and Roscosmos “have debated for months over the cause and potential fixes of small air leaks aboard Russia’s Zvezda service module, a key structure of the ISS, a football field-size orbital laboratory.”
The air leaks had been “relatively minor in recent months but escalated Friday from a pound of air per day to two pounds,” Reuters reported, citing an unnamed senior NASA official.
According to the official, Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev “were planning to use a saw” to reach an area where they believed they could access one of the leaks, but NASA “disagreed with this method.”
“The cracks have always been a concern that NASA watches very closely,” Stevens said in her initial statement. “NASA and Roscosmos have been working to determine the root cause of the cracks, and Roscosmos manages the issue through operational mitigation measures and periodic partial-repair efforts.”
Following the new leaks, Stevens said Roscosmos “elected to proceed with a more extensive repair operation,” prompting NASA to have the astronauts take shelter aboard the Dragon spacecraft.
“We look forward to working with Roscosmos on a collaborative approach to address the leaks,” the NASA spokesperson added.
The International Space Station was launched in 1998, orbiting the Earth every 90 minutes from about 250 miles above its surface.
Long-term human occupancy began in 2000, and astronauts have never had to evacuate the ISS in its 27-year history.
NASA’s current ISS mission, Expedition 74, began on Dec. 8 and will end this summer.
