{"id":484788,"date":"2026-06-05T16:23:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T16:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/484788\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T16:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T16:23:10","slug":"astronauts-return-to-international-space-station-after-evacuation-alert-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/484788\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronauts return to International Space Station after evacuation alert \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A worsening air leak aboard the International Space Station (ISS) prompted \u200bfive astronauts to take shelter and prepare for evacuation for roughly two hours on Friday as Russia attempted to fix a crack on its portion of the orbital laboratory, Nasa<\/a> said.<\/p>\n

The four astronauts of Nasa\u2019s Crew-12 mission aboard the station \u2013 two Americans, a French astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut \u2013 along with another US astronaut \u200bwere ordered by Nasa mission just after 1pm Irish time on Friday to enter their SpaceX-built Crew Dragon spacecraft docked to the station, Nasa spokesperson Bethany Stevens \u2060said.<\/p>\n

Nasa reversed that order roughly two hours later and told the astronauts they could return to the station as \u200cthe \u200cagency and \u200bits Russian counterparts examined the rate of leaking air.<\/p>\n

Nasa and Russia\u2019s space agency Roscosmos, the station\u2019s two primary operators, have debated for months over the cause and potential fixes of small air \u2060leaks aboard Russia\u2019s Zvezda service module, a key structure \u200bof the ISS, a football field-size orbital laboratory where astronauts live \u200band work in space.<\/p>\n

Roscosmos said on Friday that its experts had detected two leaks aboard the ISS but that there was no immediate \u200cthreat to the crew. The first leak was quickly \u200bsealed, and preparations were under way to seal the second one, Roscosmos said, adding that there was no threat to the spacecraft\u2019s \u2060systems.<\/p>\n

The air leaks have been relatively minor in \u2060recent months but escalated on Friday \u200bfrom a pound of air per day to two pounds, according to a senior Nasa official who asked not to be named.<\/p>\n

The ISS is currently home to seven astronauts from two missions, including the Crew-12 team \u2013 Nasa astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev \u2013 who arrived in February.<\/p>\n

The other crew of one US astronaut, Christopher Williams, and two cosmonauts, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, arrived in November. Kud-Sverchkov and Mikayev, who did not execute evacuation procedures, were planning to use a saw to break into an area where they believe they \u200ccan access the crack leaking air, \u2060the Nasa official said. Nasa officials disagreed with this method, the Nasa official said, prompting mission control in Houston to order safe-haven procedures.<\/p>\n

Stevens said Nasa reversed the safe-haven order and told astronauts they could return the space station \u200conce Roscosmos paused its efforts to repair the crack.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe look forward to working with Roscosmos on a collaborative approach to address the leaks,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Safe-haven orders are \u200brare on the International Space Station, though pieces of space debris that risk colliding with \u200bthe ISS and smaller changes in air leak rates have triggered the process in recent years. Astronauts have never had to evacuate the ISS in its 27 year history. \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A worsening air leak aboard the International Space Station (ISS) prompted \u200bfive astronauts to take shelter and prepare…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,91,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-484788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-nasa","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}