A worsening air leak aboard the International Space Station prompted five astronauts on Friday to take shelter and prepare for evacuation for about two hours as Russia attempted to repair a crack on its part of the orbiting laboratory, NASA said.
The four astronauts from NASA’s Crew-12 mission aboard the station – two Americans, a French astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut – along with another American astronaut, were ordered by NASA mission control at 9:04 a.m. ET (1:04 p.m. GMT) on Friday to enter their SpaceX-built Crew Dragon spacecraft docked at the station, NASA spokeswoman Bethany Stevens said.
NASA reversed that order about two hours later and told the astronauts they could return to the station while the agency and its Russian counterparts examined the air leak rate.
NASA and Russian space agency Roscosmos, the station’s two main operators, have debated for months over the cause and potential solutions to the small air leaks aboard Russia’s Zvezda service module, a key structure on the ISS, an orbiting laboratory the size of a football field where astronauts live and work in space.
Roscosmos said Friday that its experts had detected two leaks aboard the ISS but that there was no immediate threat to the crew. The first leak was quickly plugged and preparations were being made to plug the second, Roscosmos said, adding that there was no threat to the spacecraft’s systems.
Air leaks have been relatively minor in recent months, but increased Friday from a pound of air per day to two pounds, according to a senior NASA official who asked not to be named.
The ISS is currently home to seven astronauts from two missions, including the Crew-12 team – NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev – who arrived in February.
The other crew, consisting of an American astronaut, Christopher Williams, and two cosmonauts, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, arrived in November.
Kud-Sverchkov and Mikayev, who did not perform evacuation procedures, planned to use a saw to reach an area where they think they can access air escaping from the crack, the NASA official said. NASA officials did not agree with this method, the NASA official said, prompting mission control in Houston to order shelter procedures.
Stevens said NASA canceled the shelter order and told the astronauts they could return the space station once Roscosmos suspended its efforts to repair the crack. “We look forward to working with Roscosmos on a collaborative approach to remediating the leaks,” she said.
Refuge orders are rare on the International Space Station, although space debris at risk of colliding with the ISS and more minor changes in air leak rates have triggered the process in recent years. Astronauts have never had to evacuate the ISS in its 27-year history.
Legislation is currently before the U.S. Congress that would extend the space station’s expected lifespan by two years, to 2032, to give companies more time to develop a replacement.
The bill has the support of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, chair and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. The legislation is part of the committee’s efforts to compete with China’s growing footprint in space.
Leaders in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives are working to reach consensus on the bill.
