The saga of the International Space Station air leak took a worrying turn Friday

“Following new leaks, Roscosmos has elected to proceed with a more extensive repair operation on Friday, June 5,” NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens wrote on X. “Out of an abundance of caution, NASA has directed all four of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-12 members and NASA astronaut Chris Williams to assume an elevated safety posture in the Dragon spacecraft while the repair is underway.”

Back to normal

After about 90 minutes, the communications officer at mission control in Houston told the crew that they could reopen hatches and reenter the space station. The specific repair task that caused NASA to issue the shelter order was off. “Our Russian colleagues have elected to perform measurements only today. So, with that, we are comfortable backing out of the safe haven config,” mission control told the crew.

“We don’t have help from our counterparts?” Crew-12 commander Jessica Meir asked mission control. “Affirm,” mission control replied.

Those counterparts—Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev—were working at the leak area on the opposite end of the station, some 200 feet away from the Crew Dragon.

Stevens soon posted an update on X, writing that Roscosmos had “paused” the “structural repair efforts” inside the PrK to take more measurements and assess data. “We look forward to working with Roscosmos on a collaborative approach to address the leaks,” Stevens added.

Ars asked two NASA spokespersons for details on the proposed leak repair and why the agency decided that the repair was risky enough to order the US crew members into the Crew Dragon lifeboat. They did not provide answers to these questions as of the time of this publication, but we will add any information we receive to this story.