Space

ISS Leak Scare Underscores Why NASA Is Ready to Send the Aging Outpost to a Fiery End

Five astronauts ordered to take shelter and prepare for evacuation for roughly two hours as Russian crew attempted to fix a crack on its portion of the orbital laboratory,

Posted by Leslie Eastman

NASA and Roscosmos are dealing with a worsening but still controlled air leak in the Russian Zvezda service module transfer tunnel (PrK) of the International Space Station (ISS).

The leak briefly prompted NASA to order astronauts into a docked Dragon spacecraft in case an evacuation became necessary.

Mission control in Houston radioed the station around 9 am EST (14:00 UTC) and sent four Crew-12 astronauts into SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom: NASA’s Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, French astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. The four launched on Crew-12 in February, and the capsule doubles as their lifeboat until their scheduled return to Earth in September. NASA astronaut Chris Williams, who reached the station aboard a Russian Soyuz, joined them inside the Dragon.

The call from the ground was direct. “All USOS (US Orbital Segment) crew members need to execute … Emergency Procedure 3.4: Crew Dragon, establish Safe Haven,” controllers told the crew. “If we need (you) to suit up, we will do that once we’re inside the Dragon.”

A worsening air leak aboard the International Space Station (ISS) prompted five 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, according to NASA. pic.twitter.com/H4PmxSDf4A

— AstroNana (@ImAstroNana) June 7, 2026

However, operations returned to normal relatively quickly while crews continued repairs and monitoring.

NASA reversed that order roughly two hours later and told the astronauts they could return to the station as the agency ⁠and its Russian counterparts examined the rate of leaking air.

NASA and Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, the station’s two primary operators, have debated for months over the cause and potential fixes of small air leaks aboard Russia’s Zvezda service module, a key structure of the ISS, a football field-size orbital laboratory where astronauts live and work in space.

Roscosmos said on Friday that its experts had detected two leaks aboard the ISS but that there was no immediate threat to the crew. The first leak was quickly sealed, and preparations were underway to seal the second one, Roscosmos said, adding that there was no threat to the spacecraft’s systems.

Seven astronauts remain aboard ISS as repairs continue. Read more about what happened: https://t.co/3iNRs4Of5m pic.twitter.com/3CIMpNncLU

— Cybernews (@Cybernews) June 8, 2026

Engineers have traced the problem to microscopic cracks in the PrK structure, which have caused slow leaks of the station’s atmosphere since at least 2019, and have proven difficult to permanently seal.

Engineers believe the leaks are caused by microscopic cracks in the module’s structure. Russian cosmonauts have repeatedly inspected and attempted to seal the cracks, but a permanent fix has eluded them. After a few months of pressure stability inside the PrK earlier this year, Roscosmos confirmed in May that the air leaks had returned.

Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, typically keeps the PrK sealed off from the rest of the space station to isolate the leak from the crew’s living quarters and workstations. This allows the transfer tunnel to be maintained at a lower pressure than the rest of the station. When cosmonauts need to access the area, such as for inspections, repairs, or transferring cargo to or from a docked Progress supply vessel, they pressurize the PrK to match the pressure inside the rest of the station. This allows the cosmonauts to open up the PrK to complete their work.

A statement posted by Roscosmos on its Telegram channel suggests this is what was happening early Friday. “Specialists from the Russian ISS segment’s main operations control team detected a leak in the chamber” during pressurization of the PrK.

…Russian and NASA officials also did not say what compelled Roscosmos to plan an immediate repair after discovering the two potential leak sites on Friday. They also did not say when cosmonauts might try again to patch the leak, or if any future repair effort might again force the US crew members to take shelter.

It’s a good thing that NASA plans to retire the ISS around 2030 using a specially built “space tug,” likely based on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. The $1 billion plan involves a controlled deorbit that will send most of the 400‑ton complex burning up in the atmosphere and the remaining 40–100 tons into the remote Pacific “spacecraft graveyard” at Point Nemo.

NASA officials now say that the last cargo capsule will depart the ISS around mid–2029, ahead of the official end of operations in 2030.

Once the last crew have gone, the station will continue to fall over several months until it reaches the ‘point of no return’ at an altitude of 175 miles (280 km).

Roughly 18 months before the ISS crashes down in 2031, the modified Dragon capsule will dock with the station and prepare to deliver the finishing blow.

Speaking at a press conference in 2024, Dana Weigel, NASA’s ISS manager, explained that the tug would do this over several stages over 18 months.

Inside NASA’s $1 BILLION plan to destroy the ISS: As the latest leak sparks evacuation fears, experts reveal how the doomed space station will be destroyed in 2030 https://t.co/eF9tARbsJW

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) June 8, 2026

Between aging Russian hardware, recurring microcracks, and geopolitical strain, relying on stop‑gap patches and optimistic press releases does not appear to be a sustainable long‑term strategy. NASA’s decision to fund a controlled, Dragon‑based deorbit and send the aging outpost to a fiery end over Point Nemo is a necessary, responsible transition away from a creaking Cold War–era platform toward newer, commercially driven stations.

I foresee a very busy trading day on June 11th.

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That’s 2x oversubscribed.

For context, bankers told Reuters that 2x is “modest” by typical IPO standards. What makes it impressive is the… pic.twitter.com/tzgBkh6lUK

— IPO Newsroom (@IPONewsroom_) June 5, 2026

5 7 votes

Article Rating

48 Comments

Neil Pryke

June 11, 2026 10:32 pm

Hollow Men…not with a bang, but a whimper…

Ozonebust

Reply to Neil Pryke

June 11, 2026 10:50 pm

atticman

Reply to Ozonebust

June 12, 2026 3:52 am

T S Eliot.

ToldYouSo

June 11, 2026 11:19 pm

Well, contrary to the “Field of Dreams” philosophy, we built it (the ISS) and they didn’t come.

Over some 14 years since the ISS was first declared ready to accept industrial experiments to investigate benefits from a near-weightless environment with ready access to a high vacuum environment (starting 2012), no world-class manufacturer found any real need to manufacture anything at production-scale using those specific environmentns provided by the ISS. So much for assertions of producing super-spherical ball bearings, new crystalline materials, new drugs, etc., in space.

Sad, but true.

Yes, it’s time to permanently retire (i.e., deorbit) the ISS and to waste the dollars committed to it on other boondoggles, such as NASA’s/Jared Issacman’s recently announced plans for a permanent human colony on the Moon starting in 2032 or so.

Give me a break . . . IMHO, just another “Field of Dreams” dream!

Archer

Reply to ToldYouSo

June 12, 2026 3:43 am

The ISS wasn’t built for what you claim. It was not designed for production-scale anything; it’s a space laboratory, where small-scale experiments and tests are run to develop a greater understanding of how materials and biological functions are affected by long-term microgravity. Hundreds of experiments have been carried out up there (one example os Merck’s experiments with microgravity protein crystal growth, which helped them develop new ways to infuse drugs through the skin), which has led to companies and organisations now pursuing their own dedicated, though currently small-scale space manufacturing facilities.

Tom Abbott

Reply to Archer

June 12, 2026 4:31 am

Exactly right.

ToldYouSo

Reply to Tom Abbott

June 12, 2026 11:18 am

“Exactly right.”

Well, if you were referring to Archer’s comment regarding drugs developed in space that lead to “companies and organisations now pursuing their own dedicated, though currently small-scale space manufacturing facilities“, the adjective “exactly” is a misfire.

This, from Google’s AI bot:

“No drugs manufactured entirely in space are in widespread daily distribution on Earth as of 2026. The off-world supply chain is strictly in the experimental and trial phase.”

MarkW

Reply to ToldYouSo

June 12, 2026 2:54 pm

Yet another disconnect:
Your first quote talks about future production in satellites which are being planned but aren’t yet built.

Your second quote talks about the present.

Twice now, your own evidence has refuted the point you thought you were making.

ToldYouSo

Reply to MarkW

June 13, 2026 7:34 am

Uhhh . . . the “first quote” in my post immediately above was a replay of Tom Abbott’s comment, one that I never made or concurred with.

But I’m comforted that you at least interpreted my last quote correctly, as it reinforces my OP statement that “Over some 14 years . . . no world-class manufacturer found any real need to manufacture anything at production-scale using those specific environments provided by the ISS.”

Given these facts, what was the point you were trying to make?

-1

MarkW

Reply to ToldYouSo

June 13, 2026 7:55 pm

You criticize a forward looking quote by proclaiming that in the past nobody has tried to do something.
You are seeing what you want to see, not what is there.

MarkW

Reply to Archer

June 12, 2026 9:20 am

Thousands of experiments, not just hundreds.

-1

ToldYouSo

Reply to Archer

June 12, 2026 11:05 am

Please reread—more importantly, understand—my comment above. I specifically referred to conducting industrial experiments on board the ISS. Following that, I specifically stated “. . .no world-class manufacturer found any real need to manufacture anything at production-scale using those specific environmentns (yeah, typo) provided by the ISS.” By that I meant that no industry found the need to send their own spacecraft/manufacturing facility into space based on any ISS experiments that were performed in the micro-g and vacuum available at the orbital environment of the ISS.

I never claimed that the ISS was built and flow with any capability for production-scale manufacturing. Moreover, I never meant to imply that any industry would move their manufacturing onto ISS because that would obviously be impractical due to limited resource availability, interference with basic research being conducted for other purposes, astronaut safety concerns, and (very likely) such would be in violation of several MOUs/contracts/treaties amongst those that funded, fabricated and assembled the various parts/segments of the ISS.

rovingbroker

Reply to ToldYouSo

June 12, 2026 4:30 am

… and Christopher Columbus should never have bothered looking for a westward route to Asia.

ToldYouSo

Reply to rovingbroker

June 12, 2026 11:32 am

Christopher Colombus made an accidental discovery of (ultimately) great wealth, whereas those aboard the ISS have so far . . .

Also, it’s a stretch to equate exploration with scientific experimentation.

-4

Sparta Nova 4

Reply to ToldYouSo

June 12, 2026 5:54 am

So negative.

Have you no optimism to offer humanity?

ToldYouSo

Reply to Sparta Nova 4

June 12, 2026 11:52 am

Answer: looking at just
(a) the current mix of buffoons running first-world countries on planet Earth,
(b) the on-going wars around the world that are apparently tolerated by the majority of humans,
(c) the devolution of humanity’s arts, culture and communication skills—perhaps even “intelligence” itself— due to “social media” and the dangers of AI, and
(d) the economic house-of-cards that has been established by most nations of Earth (check out https://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html ) mortgaging their futures by impossible-to-pay-off debt accumulations over many decades, as exemplified by the USA,
my current answer is no, not really.

But rejoice in this . . . this is just my $0.02. /sarc

-3

Sparta Nova 4

Reply to ToldYouSo

June 12, 2026 12:25 pm

Too bad you cannot see past those.

ToldYouSo

Reply to Sparta Nova 4

June 12, 2026 1:04 pm

Seriously??? You think that “humanity” stands apart from “governments” and “politics”, and even “wars”?

As a little child once said to a worldwide audience: “How dare you!”

And as rebuttal to your last sentence:
“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
— Sir Issac Newton

-1

MarkW

Reply to ToldYouSo

June 12, 2026 9:19 am

Disconnect: “ISS was first declared ready to accept industrial experiments”
vs. “found any real need to manufacture anything at production-scale”

ISS was never designed to support full scale commercial production.

-2

Tom Abbott

June 12, 2026 4:39 am

We spent $150 billion dollars putting this laboratory in orbit. We should not just throw it away because the Russia Zvezda service module is leaking. Replace the Russian hardware or deal with it like they are doing now with low pressure.

There are other uses for the laboratory modules such as using a couple of them to demonstrate artificial gravity in space.

We should keep a presence in low-Earth orbit, unless you want to rent space on the Chinese space station.

Deorbiting perfectly useful laboratory modules is a stupid move, imo. A move done by people who think they have unlimited budgets.

Sparta Nova 4

Reply to Tom Abbott

June 12, 2026 5:59 am

I once read an article decades ago that proposed putting a little extra energy into shuttle launches so the exterior fuel tanks remained in orbit. The concept involved in situ adaptation to create an orbital habitat and the residuals in the spent fuel tanks providing materials used in environmental control.

Indeed. Why waste it.

Counterpoint. If repurposing it cannot be done on a timeline consistent with orbit decay or maintaining orbit is too complex or expensive, then one has to face the possibility of a point of no return.

Indeed. Why give up just now?

Scarecrow Repair

Reply to Sparta Nova 4

June 12, 2026 7:03 am

NASA also went out of their way to snub Skylab and let if de-orbit, sez my memory. They didn’t like anyone showing why the Space Shuttle and ISS were unnecessary.

MarkW

Reply to Scarecrow Repair

June 12, 2026 9:25 am

Your memory is faulty.
NASA had plans to boost Skylab to a higher orbit.
Unfortunately an extremely active sun caused the upper atmosphere to expand more than the models suggested it would. As a result Skylab came down before the mission to save it was ready.

The rescue mission was originally designed to be carried into space by the Shuttle. However that program was years late getting to first launch.

Skylab was never designed to do what ISS could do.
Especially after one of the main solar panel arrays was lost on launch.

Skylab could have been repaired, but not without new parts that could only be brought up by the shuttle.

Tom Abbott

Reply to Sparta Nova 4

June 12, 2026 11:13 am

The original space station designs accepted by NASA included one that used three Space Shuttle engines that were attached to a habitation module (15 feet long by 28 feet in diameter), which was then attached to the bottom of the External Tank at launch. No Space Shuttle attached.

This configuration was called “Option C” by NASA. It would be capable of launching the habitation module and the entire External Tank into orbit, where astronauts would use the habitation module as a bas for turning the External Tank into additional real estate for the space station.

Just a few Shuutle launches would be required to bring up the hardware needed to complete the conversion.

NASA approved this design but did not use it.

It was the least expensive design, the fastest design and required only a few additional shuttle launches to complete, whereas Options A & B were much more expensive, took much longer to complete and required dozens of additional Shuttle launches to bring everything into orbit.

NASA chose Option A.

We had a lot of discussion about this over on UseNets sci.space discussion groups.

After the Space Shuttle exploded in 1987, I volunteered to teach astronomy and space science at the elementary school where my mother was a teacher. I felt like I needed to do something to help the kids get over it and move forward. After all, most of these kids, all over the country were tuned into the launch.

I taught these kids about the External Tank Space Station. We created a full-scale model of it on the playground. I wanted them to realize just how big this thing was. Bigger than Option A and Option B.

Our elementary school submitted a paper to NASA promoting the External Tank Space Station, and NASA responded by sending representatives to Hilldale Elimentary School and gave the school an award and named the kids “Young Astronauts”.

I suspect NASA’s enthusiasm was more about finding kids excited about the space program after that horrific accident, than about the design of a space station.

We were on all the local tv channels. I think their NASA award is still sitting in their hallway.

Sparta Nova 4

Reply to Tom Abbott

June 12, 2026 12:29 pm

Thank you. Frankly, in that era, I was concentrating on other things. I was unaware of the options.

Tom Abbott

Reply to Sparta Nova 4

June 13, 2026 6:36 am

I forgot to mention that the Hilldale ET space station would consist of about 100 External Tanks connected together end-to-end into a circle, similar to the space station in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”.

Our ET space station would be one mile in diameter and would rotate around the center at one revolution per minute, which would produce one Earth-equivalent “gravity” inside the space station.

NASA ended up launching 135 External Tanks.

Of course, the ET to orbit would take all the Space Suttle’s capacity, which would interfere with NASA’s other projects so 100 ET’s in orbit was not a practicality, but we just did the design to emphasize things like producing artificial gravity.

But the Option C ET space station was certainly feasible.

I think NASA management wanted to emphasize Space Shuttle launches and Option A needed a lot of Space Shuttle launches to get everything in orbit, so they went with that.

The Option C space station only required about four Suttle launches to get everything in orbit, the Option C configuration and three conventional Shuttle launches to get everything in orbit.

Goldin wanted to maximize Shuttle launches.

MarkW

Reply to Tom Abbott

June 12, 2026 9:23 am

The Russian module is not the only part of the craft that is aging.
If you read the logs, the crew is having to spend an increasing percentage of their time performing maintenance.
There is also safety to be concerned about. If something major fails, there may not be time for the crew to make it to the evacuation modules.
It’s best to de-orbit while we still have control over the station.

Tom Abbott

Reply to MarkW

June 12, 2026 11:27 am

I would think now is the time to hang onto the space station.

We want to know the effects of space on our constructions.

The Russian module might be a case of poor manufacturing. How will we know if we burn everything up in the atmosphere?

How do the American-constructed modules hold up? Are they leaking air?

There are lots of good questions we don’t have an answer to, and we won’t get those answers if we throw away the space station too soon.

What would it cost to launch a space station habitat module into orbit today?

MarkW

Reply to Tom Abbott

June 13, 2026 7:59 pm

If you are proposing no longer having astronauts live in ISS and then wait to see what breaks next, that is an option.
The station is slowly approaching the state where it isn’t safe for human habitation.

In regards to waiting to see what breaks next, what if that thing, is something that prevents us from de-orbiting the station safely.
Big, pieces of the much smaller Skylab made it through the atmosphere successfully.

ToldYouSo

Reply to Tom Abbott

June 12, 2026 12:14 pm

That $150 billion is “water already over the dam”.

This is the issue going forward:
Keeping ISS functioning costs NASA (USA) $3-4 billion USD annually, with total yearly costs across all global partners (including Roscosmos, ESA, JAXA, and CSA) reaching $4.5 billion USD.

And since some parts of ISS, beyond just the Russian hardware, are more than 30 years old (taking into account the time from start of ground manufacturing until launch), it is inevitable that the rates of failures/serious problems occurring will be on an exponentially increasing curve going forward.

As but one example, there is this from Google’s AI bot:
“The original solar arrays on the International Space Station (ISS) were designed for a 15-year service life but have been operating continuously for more than two decades. Over time, their photovoltaic cells have degraded at an average rate of 0.2% to 0.5% per year, losing an estimated 20% to 30% of their total power capacity.”

For right or wrong, not that many people today view the political and scientific output values from ISS as being worth those ever-increasing annual costs.

Tom Abbott

Reply to ToldYouSo

June 13, 2026 6:48 am

With the solar panels deteriorating now would be a good time to make a plan to put a Solar Power Satellite in orbit. It can beam power to the ISS.

An SPS could also be used as a source of propulsion around the Earth-Moon system.

I like the “Flying Tea Kettle” concept: Your fuel is ordinary water, and you use the beamed power from the SPS to turn the water into steam, and Away you go, flying through space!

With enough power an SPS could send a vessel on a trip to Mars.

-1

ToldYouSo

Reply to Tom Abbott

June 13, 2026 7:56 am

Among many other things, this:

“An SPS could also be used as a source of propulsion around the Earth-Moon system.”

Say what??? Being able to generate electrical energy from solar energy (the fundamental concept for solar power satellites) DOES NOT enable that satellite to become a “source of propulsion”. Excluding the use of “large solar sails” (which do not provide much thrust, let alone in desired direction at a desired time), practical propulsion systems require the expenditure of propellant mass.

Intercepting sunlight to provide electricity directly from solar PV panels, or indirectly by reflecting to Earth-surface stations to then generate electricity does not create propellant mass. And nobody realistically proposes using an SPS with deployed solar PV array or deployed reflectors (either approaching a square mile or more in area) as a space tug.

-1

MarkW

Reply to ToldYouSo

June 13, 2026 8:01 pm

Much more efficient just to replace the aging panels on the space station.

Scarecrow Repair

June 12, 2026 5:34 am

Ever since the ISS began, I have been under the impression that NASA’s official policy for a while was that when the ISS was complete, they would de-orbit it, because it was too expensive to maintain and they had no real use for it. But the few times I have tried to confirm this, I find nothing.

Does anyone else remember such a policy?

Sparta Nova 4

Reply to Scarecrow Repair

June 12, 2026 8:03 am

Per Google AI:

“Decommissioning and disposal were always integral to the plan for the International Space Station (ISS). Designed with an initial structural lifespan of about 30 years, the core hardware was never intended to be a permanent, infinite structure. Space stations in low Earth orbit experience severe thermal stress, radiation, and orbital debris, making an eventual controlled destruction necessary for public safety.”

Multiple links to NASA and others.

The end of life dedinition was 2024. It was extended based on multiple factors.

Scarecrow Repair

Reply to Sparta Nova 4

June 12, 2026 8:34 am

That’s not what I remember from that early period. This was before it was finished. I don’t remember now how long that policy persisted. And as I remember it, the de-orbit would be intentional, not just a matter of getting lower and lower.

That’s what bugs me about it. In some ways, it’s a completely nonsensical policy, and announcing it was even dumber. But NASA’s record with Skylab and the shuttle have been so bad that it doesn’t sound implausible.

MarkW

Reply to Scarecrow Repair

June 12, 2026 9:34 am

After the experience of the uncontrolled re-entry of Skylab, it’s not surprising that someone would ask NASA about de-orbit plans for ISS.
Nothing sinister here.

MarkW

Reply to Scarecrow Repair

June 12, 2026 9:32 am

Everything put into space has end-of-life de-orbit plans, since nothing lasts forever.
Nothing sinister about that. Obviously the plans for de-orbit would come after the station was completed, though they were always for years after it was completed.

ToldYouSo

Reply to MarkW

June 12, 2026 12:42 pm

“Everything put into space has end-of-life de-orbit plans . . .”

Not true.

Many plans call for “disposal” of geosynchronous/geostationary satellites at their end-of-life by “super-synching” of their orbits. This means that their orbit will be raised to be above an altitude of 35,786 km (22,236 miles) from Earth’s average surface, so as to free-up the valuable geosynchronous/geostationary “orbital slot allocation” that they previously held while operational.

In some cases (especially where there is a worry about residual satellite propellant exploding due to loss of thermal control when the satellite really “dies”), the super-synching is intended to reach Earth escape velocity, in which case that satellite then goes into orbit around the Sun, where any explosion just won’t matter.

The two main reasons favoring super-synching of GEO satellites is (a) it eliminates the concern about orbital debris from a de-orbit burn impacting Earth’s surface, and (b) boosting to a “super-synchronous” (graveyard) orbit requires only a tiny fraction of the propellant needed for a controlled de-orbit.

potsniron

June 12, 2026 6:50 am

remember the Apollo near disaster? They used duct tape. Should work here, too, since inside pressure pushes against the leaky spot or zone. May be they used it up, already/

Sparta Nova 4

Reply to potsniron

June 12, 2026 7:56 am

Finding micro cracks as is the reported fault, is difficult.
Bare surfaces can be duct taped, but areas behind mounted equipment are not so easily accessed.

MarkW

Reply to potsniron

June 12, 2026 9:37 am

Before you can fix it, you must first find it. From what I have read, they have not yet found the source of the leak.

Not all the interior surfaces of the ISS can be easily reached. For some of them you have to unmount equipment. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are other areas that can’t be reached from the inside. The leak is not large enough to justify risking astronauts to go outside to look for it.
I’m not sure what kind of equipment one would need in order to look for such a leak from the outside.

Sparta Nova 4

Reply to MarkW

June 12, 2026 12:35 pm

Just a whimsical thought.

Put something it the air that is visible in a vacuum. Luminescence, a dye. Creative minds might come up with something.

That aside, micro cracks indicate impending structural fatigue. Point being patch one and shortly after go through it all again.

MarkW

Reply to Sparta Nova 4

June 13, 2026 8:02 pm

This is the air that the astronauts are also breathing.

ToldYouSo

Reply to potsniron

June 12, 2026 12:51 pm

The leaks are indicative of microcracks, which with repeated thermal/pressure cycles will tend to grow into mini-cracks, which in turn will tend to grow/combine into large cracks . . . well, you can imagine how this progression might end.

As much as I admire the capabilities and usefullness of duct tape, unless it is wrapped around a cracked object, it is utterly useless at providing structural support that might mitigate crack propagation.

MarkW

June 12, 2026 9:16 am

Best case scenario: A lose bolt somewhere is allowing air to escape around it.
Worst case scenario: A crack in a structural weld is slowly growing and when it gets big enough, a portion of the space station will break free catestrophically.

Until the leak is found, there’s no way of knowing where on the spectrum the real problem lies.

Regardless, a continuing leak of air will make maintaining the space station more expensive, as that air needs to be replaced by supplies from the ground.

I hadn’t heard about the plans to use a dragon module to de-orbit the station. I hope the module will have sufficient time to release from the station and re-enter on it’s own.

ferdberple

June 13, 2026 9:48 am

Repeated pressurization and depresurization fatigue the metal causing leaks. The cure is the cause.

Remember Hawaiian Air jet explosive decompression as the cabin top ripped off. Metal fatigue.

MarkW

Reply to ferdberple

June 13, 2026 8:04 pm

I’m pretty sure that they are not repeatedly pressurizing and depressurizing the space station.
More likely stress from thermal cycling as the station moves in and out of the earth’s shadow.