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NASA instructed crew members aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to return to planned operations after Russia’s space agency Roscosmos paused Friday’s structural repair efforts inside the Zvezda service module.
“Given this development, NASA has instructed the crew members inside the Dragon spacecraft to end the safe haven procedures and return to planned operations aboard the International Space Station,” the U.S. agency’s spokesperson Bethany Stevens said in a post on X.
Roscosmos said its experts had detected two leaks aboard the ISS, but that there was no immediate threat to the crew.
“When the transition chamber compartment of the Zvezda module was pressurized … specialists from the main operational control group for the Russian segment of the ISS detected a leak from the spacecraft,” it said in a statement.
Preparations underway for 2nd leak
The first leak was fixed with a hermetic compound. Preparations are underway to seal the second leak, located on the conical part of the transition chamber compartment, Roscosmos said.
“The situation does not threaten the safety of the crew and onboard systems — the pressure on board the ISS is stable and maintained at the calculated level.”
WATCH | Official NASA stream live from the ISS:
Earlier Friday, NASA ordered astronauts aboard the International Space Station to shelter in their spacecraft and prepare for potential evacuation as repairs were underway.
The four astronauts of NASA’s Crew-12 mission at the station — two U.S. astronauts, a French astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut — got orders from mission control at 9:04 a.m. ET to enter their Crew Dragon spacecraft docked to the station and don their spacesuits in case the leak warrants an emergency evacuation, a NASA official said.
NASA and Roscosmos, the station’s two primary operators, have debated for months over the cause of and potential fixes for small air leaks aboard the Russian Zvezda service module, a key structure of the football field-sized laboratory.
“We continue to work with our Russian counterparts, along with the rest of the international community that supports the space station, to arrive at a more permanent resolution,” Stevens said in an earlier post on X.