Space station air leaks trigger delay to private astronaut mission
NASA indefinitely delayed a four-person crew's mission to the International Space Station on Thursday over an escalating probe into air leaks aboard the orbiting laboratory's Russian segment.
The U.S. space agency said it was working with Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, to "understand a new pressure signature" detected by cosmonauts in the Zvezda Service Module, a more than 2-decade-old core compartment that for months has sprung small leaks.
"Cosmonauts aboard the space station recently performed inspections of the pressurized module's interior surfaces, sealed some additional areas of interest, and measured the current leak rate," NASA said in a statement. "Following this effort, the segment now is holding pressure."
The agency did not immediately respond to questions on what the leak rate was.
Small cracks on the ISS in recent years, particularly on the aging Russian segment, have contributed to the international partnership's decision to retire the ISS by 2030.
Leaks of air from the cracks have been minor and posed no immediate safety threats to the station's astronauts but are increasingly worrisome signs of aging that NASA and Roscosmos have been investigating, while having crew members patch the leaks with tape, glue and other solutions.
Scheduled to be aboard the Axiom Mission 4 is Shubhanshu Shukla, an Indian Air Force pilot and one of four astronauts-in-training picked by the Indian Space Research Organization to fly on India's own debut crewed mission, the Gaganyaan mission planned for 2027.
Shukla, 39, will be the first astronaut to go to the ISS from India's astronaut corps. — Reuters
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
GMA Network
6 days ago
- GMA Network
Astronauts from India, Poland, Hungary launched on first space station mission
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Axiom-4 crew of four astronauts lifts off from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A on a mission to the International Space Station, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., June 25, 2025. REUTERS/ Steve Nesius CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida - NASA retiree turned private astronaut Peggy Whitson was launched on the fifth flight to orbit of her career early on Wednesday, joined by crewmates from India, Poland and Hungary heading for their countries' first visit to the International Space Station. The astronaut team lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at about 2:30 a.m. EDT (0630 GMT), beginning the latest mission organized by Texas-based startup Axiom Space in partnership with Elon Musk's rocket venture SpaceX. The four-member crew was carried aloft on a towering SpaceX launch vehicle consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule perched atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket. Live video showed the towering spacecraft streaking into the night sky over Florida's Atlantic coast trailed by a brilliant yellowish plume of fiery exhaust. Cameras inside the crew compartment beamed footage of the four astronauts strapped into their pressurized cabin, seated calmly side by side in helmeted white-and-black flight suits as their spacecraft soared toward space. "We've had an incredible ride uphill," Whitson radioed back to the SpaceX mission control near Los Angeles as Falcon's upper stage delivered the crew capsule to its preliminary orbit about nine minutes after launch. Dubbed "Grace" by the Axiom crew, the newly built Crew Dragon launched on Wednesday was making its debut flight as the fifth vehicle of its kind in the SpaceX capsule fleet. It also marked the first Crew Dragon flight since Musk briefly threatened to decommission the spacecraft after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to cancel Musk's government contracts in a high-profile political feud earlier this month. Two-weeks in orbit Axiom 4's autonomously operated Crew Dragon was expected to reach the ISS after a flight of about 28 hours, then dock with the outpost as the two vehicles soar together in orbit some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. If all goes according to plan, the Axiom 4 crew will be welcomed aboard the orbiting space laboratory Thursday morning by its seven current resident occupants - three astronauts from the U.S., one from Japan and three cosmonauts from Russia. Whitson, 65, and her three Axiom 4 crewmates - Shubhanshu Shukla, 39, of India, S?awosz Uzna?ski-Wi?niewski, 41, of Poland, and Tibor Kapu, 33, of Hungary - are slated to spend 14 days aboard the space station conducting microgravity research. The mission stands as the fourth such flight since 2022 arranged by Axiom as the Houston-headquartered company builds on its business of putting astronauts sponsored by private companies and foreign governments into Earth orbit. For India, Poland and Hungary, the launch marked a return to human spaceflight after more than 40 years and the first mission to send their astronauts to the International Space Station. Billionaire Charles Simonyi, a Hungarian-born software designer who became a U.S. citizen in 1982, has twice visited the ISS as a space tourist, in 2007 and 2009, hitching rides aboard Russian Soyuz capsules on both occasions. But like many wealthy individuals from various countries who have paid their own way for joyrides to space in recent years, Simonyi was not flying on behalf of his homeland or any government. Kapu is part of his country's Hungarian to Orbit (HUNOR) program, while Uzna?ski-Wi?niewski is a Polish astronaut assigned to the European Space Agency. Both are designated as Axiom 4 mission specialists. The participation of Shukla, an Indian air force pilot, is seen by India's own space program as a kind of precursor to the debut crewed mission of its Gaganyaan orbital spacecraft, planned for 2027. The Axiom 4 crew is led by Whitson, who retired from NASA in 2018 after a pioneering career that included becoming the U.S. space agency's first female chief astronaut, and the first woman to command an ISS expedition. Now a consultant and director of human spaceflight for Axiom, she has logged 675 days in space, a U.S. record, during three NASA missions and a fourth flight to space as commander of the Axiom 2 mission in 2023. Wednesday's blast-off marked SpaceX's 18th human spaceflight since Musk's privately funded rocket company ushered in a new era for NASA five years ago, providing American astronauts their first rides to space from U.S. soil since the end of the space shuttle era in 2011. Axiom, a nine-year-old venture co-founded by NASA's former ISS program manager, is one of a handful of companies developing a commercial space station of its own intended to eventually replace the ISS, which NASA expects to retire around 2030. — Reuters
GMA Network
12-06-2025
- GMA Network
Space station air leaks trigger delay to private astronaut mission
Small cracks on the ISS in recent years, particularly on the aging Russian segment, have contributed to the international partnership's decision to retire the ISS by 2030. NASA indefinitely delayed a four-person crew's mission to the International Space Station on Thursday over an escalating probe into air leaks aboard the orbiting laboratory's Russian segment. The U.S. space agency said it was working with Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, to "understand a new pressure signature" detected by cosmonauts in the Zvezda Service Module, a more than 2-decade-old core compartment that for months has sprung small leaks. "Cosmonauts aboard the space station recently performed inspections of the pressurized module's interior surfaces, sealed some additional areas of interest, and measured the current leak rate," NASA said in a statement. "Following this effort, the segment now is holding pressure." The agency did not immediately respond to questions on what the leak rate was. Small cracks on the ISS in recent years, particularly on the aging Russian segment, have contributed to the international partnership's decision to retire the ISS by 2030. Leaks of air from the cracks have been minor and posed no immediate safety threats to the station's astronauts but are increasingly worrisome signs of aging that NASA and Roscosmos have been investigating, while having crew members patch the leaks with tape, glue and other solutions. Scheduled to be aboard the Axiom Mission 4 is Shubhanshu Shukla, an Indian Air Force pilot and one of four astronauts-in-training picked by the Indian Space Research Organization to fly on India's own debut crewed mission, the Gaganyaan mission planned for 2027. Shukla, 39, will be the first astronaut to go to the ISS from India's astronaut corps. — Reuters
GMA Network
28-05-2025
- GMA Network
China launches mission to retrieve asteroid samples
WASHINGTON —China on Wednesday embarked on its first mission to retrieve samples from a nearby asteroid with the nighttime launch of its Tianwen-2 spacecraft, a robotic probe that could make the fast-growing space power the third nation to fetch pristine asteroid rocks. China's Long March 3B rocket lifted off around 1:31 a.m. local time from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center carrying the Tianwen-2 spacecraft, which over the next year will approach the small near-Earth asteroid named 469219 Kamo?oalewa, some 10 million miles away. Chinese state media Xinhua confirmed the launch of Tianwen-2 and dubbed it a "complete success." Tianwen-2 is scheduled to arrive at the asteroid in July 2026 and shoot a capsule packed with rocks back to Earth for a landing in November 2027. The mission is the latest example of China's swiftly expanding space programs, a streak of cosmic achievements in recent years that includes landing robots on the far side of the moon, running its own national space station in orbit and investing heavily in plans to send humans to the lunar surface by 2030. Japan's Hayabusa that fetched samples from a small asteroid in 2010 marked the world's first such mission. Japan did it again in 2019 with its Ryugu mission, followed by the first U.S. asteroid retrieval mission, OSIRIS-REx, that brought back samples from the Bennu asteroid in 2020. Kamo?oalewa, the target asteroid for Tianwen-2, is known as a quasi-satellite of Earth, a close celestial neighbor that has orbited the sun for roughly a century, according to NASA. Its size is anywhere between 120 feet (40 meters) and 300 feet (100 meters).—Reuters
