ISS astronauts forced to take shelter in docked spacecraft during air leak repair

The astronauts of the International Space Station (ISS) were ordered to take shelter in a docked ship after the structure suddenly began to leak air.

Five of the seven crew members were asked to enter SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom capsule, docked to the ISS, on Friday afternoon and prepared for a possible evacuation.

Meanwhile, two remaining crew members – a pair of Russian cosmonauts – they tried to repair a part of the Russian segment of the ISS, where leaks had begun to increase on Monday.

Repairs were suspended and the crew was ordered to return to the ISS by NASA on Friday afternoon.

Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, Sophie Adenot and Andrey Fedyaev, who arrived at the ISS in February, had taken refuge in the docked spacecraft along with another astronaut, Chris Williams.

They had been instructed to put on their spacesuits so they would be ready for undock and return to Earth if necessary.

The Dragon essentially works as a lifeboat: It is docked to the station, but ready to detach as soon as the order is given.

The trigger for the order was a worsening of an air leak in the transfer tunnel, known as PrK, which leads to a section of the station’s Russian segment called the Zvezda service module.

Russian cosmonauts, station commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and flight engineer Sergei Mikaev, tried to solve the problem. Their escape route was the ship Soyuz MS-28coupled separately.

A recurring problem

This is not the first time the station has had to deal with this problem: the cracks responsible for these air leaks have persisted intermittently for about six years.

However, following the arrival of a Russian cargo ship last month, the Russian space agency Roscosmos detected a new, slow pressure drop in the tunnel, prompting the decision to go beyond temporary fixes and attempt a more extensive repair operation on Friday.

But it was the method they planned to use that prompted the shelter-in-place order, according to the Reuters news agency.

It was reported that Kud-Sverchkov and Mikaev were using a saw to try to access an area where the crack was located that was leaking air.

NASA did not agree with the method they were using and mission control in Houston ordered five crew members to adopt “safe haven” on the Dragon ship.

When Roscosmos instructed its crew to pause repairs, NASA instructed the astronauts to return to the station.

NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens stated on X: “Given this development, NASA has instructed crew members inside the Dragon spacecraft to complete safe haven procedures and return to planned operations aboard the International Space Station.”.

Russia’s Tass news agency, citing Roscosmos, reported that nothing had jeopardized the safety of the crew or systems aboard the ISS.

The ISS, stretching the length of a football field, is the largest man-made object in space.

It has been operated continuously by a consortium led by the United States and Russia – including Canada, Japan and 11 European countries – since 1998.