NASA puts ISS astronauts on evacuation alert after worsening air leak

By Joey Roulette

WASHINGTON, June 5 (Reuters) – Astronauts aboard the International Space Station were ordered by NASA to shelter in their spacecraft and prepare for potential evacuation on Friday as a Russian crew attempts to fix a worsening leak of air on its portion of the orbital laboratory, NASA said.

The four astronauts of NASA’s Crew-12 mission on the station – two U.S. astronauts, a French astronaut and Russian cosmonaut – got orders from NASA mission control at 9:04 a.m. ET Monday (1304 GMT) to enter their Crew Dragon spacecraft docked to the station and don their spacesuits in case the air leak warrants an emergency evacuation, a NASA official said.

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 football field-sized laboratory.

   The air leaks have been relatively minor in recent months but escalated on Monday from a pound of air per day to two pounds, according to a senior NASA official who asked not to be named.   

(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Joe Brock and Nick Zieminski)