Even if you\u2019re not normally interested in what\u2019s happening in low Earth orbit, you probably heard that last week NASA ordered its personnel aboard the International Space Station to button themselves up in the docked Dragon spacecraft and await further instructions should they need to make a hasty departure. Known as Safe Haven, this emergency procedure is performed whenever there\u2019s an elevated risk of damage to the Station.<\/p>\n
NASA has provided an update on what happened<\/a>, but it arguably leaves more questions than answers. Usually, crews go to their Safe Haven because some bit of space junk has wandered to close to the orbiting complex, but this time it was because Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev were getting ready to start cutting into the walls of the PrK transfer tunnel in an effort to address its persistent air leak<\/a>.<\/p>\n After about an hour and a half, the Russians called off the effort and NASA gave their people the OK to leave the Dragon and return to their normal duties. NASA Press Secretary Bethany Stevens later posted on social media<\/a> that the space agency would \u201clook forward to working with Roscosmos on a collaborative approach to address the leaks\u201d in the future. There\u2019s currently no word on what a future repair attempt may entail, or when it would be attempted.<\/p>\n This is one of those things were we might not hear the full story for some time, but it sure does sound like not only did the Russians want to do something that NASA didn\u2019t think was safe, but that the whole thing was sprung on them at the last moment. To give you an idea of how serious Mission Control was taking the situation, they decided to cram five people into a Dragon capsule that only has four seats \u2014 it certainly would have made for one wild ride down to Earth if they were given the order to evacuate.<\/p>\n