NASA: International Space Station astronauts in evacuation mode due to air leak
The US space agency "NASA" has issued urgent orders to astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to take maximum safety measures and prepare for the possibility of an emergency evacuation.
This decision came after the detection of accelerated air leaks and deterioration in the service transmission tunnel of the Russian "Zvezda" unit, known as (PrK), which has been suffering from similar problems and cracks since 2019.
International media, including the Daily Mail, reported that NASA's Mission Control Center instructed the crew of the SpaceX Crew-12 mission to immediately board the Crew Dragon capsule docked with the station and wear spacesuits as a maximum precaution.
NASA spokeswoman Bethany Stevens explained in an official statement published on the "X" platform, that the service tunnel in the Russian module has long been suffering from microscopic cracks and cracks that the Russian space agency "Roscosmos" has been working to contain throughout the past period.
Based on the new leak readings, the Russian side decided to carry out a broader and comprehensive repair and maintenance operation on Friday, June 5, which necessitated the isolation of four crew members of the Crew-12 mission (including two American pilots, a French pilot, and two Russian pilots) as well as American astronaut Chris Williams inside the rescue vehicle for the duration of the complex technical operations.
Leakage Rates and Maintenance Maneuvers Increased
NASA and Roscosmos have been debating for months the causes and solutions of these small air leaks in the service unit, which is an essential part of the orbital laboratory the size of an entire football field.
Although air leakage rates have been relatively limited in recent months, they suddenly rose last Monday from about half a kilogram of air per day to a full kilogram, a dangerous indicator that called for immediate engineering intervention to prevent the station's internal atmospheric pressure from dropping and neutralize any risks that might threaten the safety of the pilots.
Subsequent technical reports confirmed that the astronauts on the Crew-12 mission did not leave the International Space Station and were not evacuated to Earth, but were temporarily transferred to the US capsule without any injuries as a precautionary measure during the critical operations phase.
The crew subsequently returned to their usual scientific activities within the station's sections after technical checks showed the progress of the maintenance work carried out by Roscosmos, and the overall condition of the station was considered to be under full operational control and safely manned.
Aging of the plant
The disturbing incident reaffirms the growing structural challenges faced by the International Space Station (ISS) due to its aging and aging core modules, which have been in service since the late 1990s.
According to the concerned American sources, the file of continuous air leakage in the Russian part is one of the most complex technical files that raises concern for global space programs, due to the extreme difficulty of locating cracks with extreme accuracy in a zero-gravity environment.
These repeated failures put the international scientific community in front of an inevitable entitlement to accelerate alternative plans aimed at building new commercial and regional space stations, at a time when NASA affirms its full commitment to cooperate with Russian partners and other international parties to continue supporting and operating the current station and reaching radical engineering solutions that ensure the continuation of scientific research safely until the official decommissioning date of the station, which is planned in the next few years.