The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has ordered five astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to protect their spacecraft on Friday morning, June 5, 2026.
The evacuation orders came as Russian cosmonauts attempted to repair a worsening air leak in the station’s Russian segment.
The four-person SpaceX Crew-12 crew, consisting of NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, along with NASA astronaut Chris Williams, were notified at 9:04 a.m. ET to board the docked Crew Dragon spacecraft and dock at their eventual space station.
After about two hours, NASA reversed evacuation orders when they realized the leak rate was under control.
The leak was discovered in the transfer tunnel of Russia’s Zvezda service module, which is a major structural component of the orbiting laboratory.
It’s been five years since NASA became concerned about cracks and air leaks. The inspector general at NASA calls them “a top security risk.” A senior NASA official confirmed that the leak rate increased from about 1 pound of air per day to 2 pounds.
The ISS maintains an atmosphere very similar to Earth’s at sea level, but not identical. The pressure is maintained at 14.7 pounds per square inch with a composition of approx. 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. Air leaks are the release of these gases through a crack into the vacuum of the room.
For now, NASA has taken the situation under control. The cracked areas were accessed using saws by Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev. However, NASA officials disagreed with the method chosen, saying the shelter order “out of an abundance of caution.”
But if the breach increases in size beyond the station’s capacity to compensate for the loss, pressure will be lost, oxygen levels will drop, and the astronauts will suffer from hypoxia (lack of oxygen) and decompression sickness, like divers do when they ascend too quickly.
But long before this proves fatal, NASA will evacuate the entire space station using the docked spacecraft, making the ISS uninhabitable if the damage cannot be undone. While death may not be an issue, lack of breathable air is the biggest threat.
