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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe International Space Station has been continuously occupied since November 2000. Credit: NASA\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
On June 5, 2026, NASA ordered five astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to shelter in a docked spacecraft and prepare to abandon ship. The reason was a longstanding, but worsening, air leak in the Russian part of the station.<\/p>\n
An hour and a half later, the alert was lifted, allowing the crew to resume their work. But the episode reminds us that humanity\u2019s most expensive science experiment \u2013 and a remarkable\u00a0symbol of international cooperation<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 is showing its age.<\/p>\n The ISS was born from a thaw in relations between Washington and Moscow immediately following the cold war. In the early 1990s, the countries decided to\u00a0merge separate space station projects<\/a>\u00a0that each was working on.<\/p>\n The air leak, in an older section of the ISS known as the Zvezda PrK transfer tunnel, is a dose of engineering reality. It is caused by fine cracks in the structure of the tunnel, which provides access to a spacecraft docking port. There is no permanent fix and the cracks have already been patched and repatched using a sealant.<\/p>\n NASA and Russia\u2019s space agency Roscosmos dispute the seriousness of the problem. Roscosmos says the slow leak poses no danger, while the US space agency views it as an elevated safety risk. Not only is the structure under strain, but also the fabric of the agreement that keeps the ISS running.<\/p>\n In 2024, the ISS advisory committee\u2019s chair\u00a0Bob Cabana said<\/a>: \u201cNASA has expressed concerns about the structural integrity of the PrK and the possibility of a catastrophic failure.\u201d<\/p>\n In early June 2026, new cracks appeared and leak rates rose. This prompted Roscosmos to propose a fix.\u00a0According to a report<\/a>\u00a0in the technology magazine Ars Technica, the Russians wanted to carry out repairs to the hull using a drill.<\/p>\n NASA balked at the plan and Roscosmos subsequently dropped it, only to come up with a new one. Under this second proposal, Russian cosmonauts would use a saw to remove a\u00a0load-bearing bracket<\/a>\u00a0in the tunnel.<\/p>\n When NASA heard this, agency officials ordered the five astronauts to shelter in\u00a0SpaceX\u2019s Crew Dragon capsule<\/a>, ready to detach from the space station should an accident occur.<\/p>\n Roscosmos ditched the second plan too, prompting NASA to\u00a0call the astronauts back onboard<\/a>. Since the incident, Roscosmos has told NASA that it will close off the PrK tunnel from the rest of the station, in a bid to draw a line under the problem.<\/p>\n A commercial future<\/p>\n The ISS was never meant to be immortal. The plan was always to let a competitive commercial market take over with privately built space stations. NASA would then send its astronauts to these new orbiting outposts, which would also be frequented by private space travellers.<\/p>\n The current frontrunner to reach low Earth orbit is\u00a0Vast\u2019s Haven-1<\/a>. This has roughly an eighth of the ISS\u2019s living space and is built for short stays of up to a month. It also relies heavily on a docked SpaceX capsule for air and power. Haven-1 is a testbed, not a like-for-like replacement, and despite optimistic assessments of launching in 2026, it is now unlikely to\u00a0fly before 2027<\/a>.<\/p>\n The stations that could fully replace the ISS are further away.\u00a0Vast\u2019s modular Haven-2<\/a>\u00a0is aiming for a first module in 2028 and is targeted for completion in 2032, the very year the ISS is now due to leave service. This leaves no margin for the delays these programmes routinely suffer.<\/p>\n Two other companies,\u00a0Axiom<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Starlab Space<\/a>, also plan large orbiting outposts. However, these are still in development, and Axiom recently\u00a0encountered financial trouble<\/a>.<\/p>\n The problem is that the companies, and those who finance them, are not ready to take the step up. The extent to which ISS replacements will be market-led has been consistently overstated. Government space agencies are going to be the main tenant and the paymaster, which makes this a commercial sector that the US is paying to bring into being.<\/p>\n Faced with less-than-ideal private sector engagement and delays, US lawmakers have extended the life of the ISS. NASA had been due to operate the ISS until 2030.\u00a0Recent legislation<\/a>, which is awaiting approval, would delay ISS decommissioning until 2032.<\/p>\n This is, in part, a response to NASA\u2019s own stalled procurement of commercial replacements for the ISS. The recent legislation recognises this, tying any retirement of the ISS to replacements being ready and warning against a scenario where China is the only country with a continued human presence in low Earth orbit.<\/p>\n How the ISS ends<\/p>\n And there is a messy legal landscape hanging over the ISS as it approaches the end of its life. In order to decommission the outpost, NASA will push the 420-tonne space station\u00a0into Earth\u2019s atmosphere<\/a>\u00a0using an adapted SpaceX Dragon vehicle \u2013 at a cost of roughly US$840 million (\u00a3638 million).<\/p>\n This controlled re-entry will take place\u00a0over Point Nemo<\/a>, the remotest part of the Pacific Ocean. This greatly reduces the risk of debris landing on populated areas.<\/p>\n Yet the space station will be the biggest orbiting object ever sent through the atmosphere and pieces as large as a small family car could survive the descent. If something were to go wrong, who would be liable?<\/p>\n Under the\u00a0United Nations Liability Convention<\/a>, a treaty from 1972, the nation that launches a space object is liable for any damage it causes. But the ISS was built from modules launched by more than one country, principally the US and Russia.<\/p>\n Where two or more states launch together, they are jointly and severally liable, the latter term meaning that any one of them can be pursued for the whole of the damage. The ISS partners comprise the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and participating member states of the European Space Agency.<\/p>\n If a piece of the station were to land where it shouldn\u2019t, causing damage, the liability is absolute \u2013 no fault need be proved. If the de-orbiting process were to damage a satellite in orbit, liability is dependent on fault. Proving fault in a scenario as complex as ISS decommissioning could be extremely difficult.<\/p>\n The ISS air leak is a reminder that space stations will require continual maintenance. Private companies will not be able to get away with a \u201csell and forget\u201d mindset when they launch their outposts.<\/p>\n With no obvious paying customers beyond space agencies lining up, investors are understandably reluctant to rush into expensive commitments. Extending the life of the ISS provides a temporary patch, but it does not remove the fundamental problem of who pays to replace it.<\/p>\n Christopher Newman<\/a>, Professor of Space Law and Policy, Northumbria University, Newcastle<\/a><\/p>\n This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The International Space Station has been continuously occupied since November 2000. Credit: NASA On June 5, 2026, NASA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[18356,61,2631,60,91,43,82],"class_list":["post-519680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-human-spaceflight","tag-ie","tag-international-space-station","tag-ireland","tag-nasa","tag-news","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519680","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=519680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/file-20260624-57-sorgnb.avif\")
The SpaceX Crew-12 astronauts (front row) and NASA\u2019s Chris Williams (centre, back row) took shelter in Crew Dragon, while two Russian crew members prepared to fix the cracks. Credit:\u00a0NASA<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/file-20260624-3942-icohf8.avif\")
The cracks are located in the PrK tunnel, a small vestibule in the Russian segment of the space station.\u00a0Credit: ESA<\/a><\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782487394_885_count.gif\")
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