NASA Crew Takes Brief Precaution in Crew Dragon While Russian Cosmonauts Seal ISS Air Leaks and Repairs Are Paused

NASA on Friday directed five of the seven crew members aboard the International Space Station to shelter inside the docked SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft while two Russian cosmonauts worked on air leaks in the Zvezda service module. The five astronauts remained in the capsule for several hours before returning to normal station operations after Roscosmos paused the repair effort.

The astronauts directed to the Crew Dragon were commander Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, and NASA Soyuz astronaut Chris Williams.

Cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikaev remained outside the capsule to address the leaks. Roscosmos reported that flight controllers detected a leak while raising pressure in the compartment and that the cosmonauts identified two potential leak locations during inspection.

The first location was sealed with the initial layer of a two-component sealing compound, while the second location sits on the conical part of the compartment.

NASA said Roscosmos found the leak rate had increased to two pounds per day. The Russian agency later cut a bracket to access a possible leak source, using a method that NASA said could have resulted in elevated risk to the structure. Roscosmos paused the structural repair efforts inside the Zvezda service module transfer tunnel, known as PrK, while additional measurements and data are assessed.

NASA said it strongly supported the decision to pause the work. "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," a NASA spokeswoman said.