The International Space Station (ISS) is still leaking air from the Russian segment of the outpost despite efforts to eliminate the losses.
Sergey Krikalev, executive director of the Human Space Flight Program at the Russian space agency Roscosmos, made the admission during the pre-launch news conference for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission.
The leaks were first detected in 2019 and, despite multiple efforts to locate and repair them, the ISS is still losing air. The crew is not in any danger, but cracks in the aging structure are less than ideal. In October 2024, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogenson told The Register that one option was to seal off the affected section of the ISS – a NASA report [PDF] stated that the leaks were in the Service Module Transfer Tunnel. Permanently sealing off the area would result in the loss of a Russian docking port.
While not disastrous for operations onboard the outpost, Roscosmos would obviously prefer not to do this and was hopeful that recent repair attempts had dealt with the issue.
The recent Axiom 4 mission was postponed so that engineers could “understand a new pressure signature, after the recent post-repair effort in the aft-most segment of the International Space Station’s Zvezda service module,” NASA said in June.
The pressure appeared stable, suggesting the repair may have worked.
Alas, no. Krikalev noted that while the leak has reduced, it was still ongoing. The former cosmonaut said that scientists from Russia and the US were working on the issue, not just to track down the root cause, but also to ensure that it wouldn’t occur in future space stations.
The crew is not in any danger, although the issue remains a concern. In the 2024 Office of Inspector General report into NASA’s Management of Risks to Sustaining ISS Operations through 2030, the cracks and leaks were described as a “top safety risk,” particularly as the leak rate was seen to increase in 2024. The reduction in leak rate following the repairs will therefore have been reassuring even if, according to the report at the time, “NASA and Roscosmos have not reached an agreement on the point at which the leak rate is untenable.”
A space agency insider told The Register today that the assertion the leak rate had been reduced and efforts were continuing to find and repair the last of the leaks did not inspire much confidence.
The problem will not have a bearing on the Crew-11 mission, which was stood down on July 31 due to cloud cover at the launch site. SpaceX and NASA will try again on August 1, hoping that the weather will cooperate this time. ®
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