NASA said Friday that astronauts at the International Space Station were briefly ordered to prepare for an evacuation due to a worsening air leak in Russia’s portion of the orbital laboratory, before allowing them to return to planned operations.
Two U.S. astronauts, as well as a French and a Russian astronaut, received orders to shelter in place in their spacecraft in case the air leak warranted an emergency evacuation, according to the Guardian.
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NASA spokeswoman Bethany Stevens said that the order was made out of an “abundance of caution” when the Russian space agency decided to conduct an “extensive repair operation” on the country’s service module on Friday.
Less than two hours after her initial announcement, the NASA spokeswoman said the agency instructed the crew members inside the docked SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft “to end the safe haven procedures and return to planned operations aboard the International Space Station.”
“We look forward to working with Roscosmos on a collaborative approach to address the leaks,” she wrote in a post to X.
The International Space Station is operated by five space agencies from 15 countries that orbit the Earth about every 90 minutes.
The air leaks on Russia’s service module, Zvezda, have been relatively minor in recent months but escalated on Monday from one pound of air per day to two pounds, a NASA official told Reuters.
NASA and Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, ICC’s two primary operators, had debated for months over the cause and potential fixes of small air leaks aboard Zvezda.
“The cracks have always been a concern that NASA watches very closely,” Stevens said.
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“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,” she said. “Following new leaks, Roscosmos has elected to proceed with a more extensive repair operation on Friday, June 5. 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 Dragon spacecraft while the repair is underway.”
NASA referred the Washington Examiner to Stevens’s statement when reached for comment.
