Astronauts on International Space Station take shelter in SpaceX Dragon as cosmonauts try to fix air leak

NASA ordered five astronauts on the International Space Station to take shelter in an attached SpaceX Dragon spacecraft today while Russian cosmonauts tried to fix a concerning air leak on the orbiting lab. "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," NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens said via X this morning. Roscosmos cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov performs a spacewalk in June 2021 at the International Space Station. The Russian Zvezda module is below him. (Image credit: NASA) The persistent leak, Stevens explained, is in the PrK transfer tunnel, which leads to Russia's Zvezda service module, one of the oldest parts of the station. This leak, apparently caused by small cracks in the tunnel, has been an issue for years , and Russia's space agency, Roscosmos , manages it "through operational mitigation measures and periodic partial-repair efforts," Stevens wrote. Those efforts were working until a few months ago, when the leak sprung up again . That development spurred today's action, which Stevens termed a "more extensive repair operation." The four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission are NASA's Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. They arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) in mid-February for a six-month stay. …