“Following further leaks, Roscosmos has decided to proceed with a broader repair operation on Friday, June 5,” said NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens. wrote in X. “Out of an abundance of caution, NASA has ordered the agency’s four SpaceX-12 crew members and NASA astronaut Chris Williams to assume an elevated safety posture on 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 they could reopen the hatches and re-enter the space station. The specific repair task that caused NASA to issue the shelter-in-place order was off. “Our Russian colleagues have chosen to conduct measurements only today. So, with that, we feel comfortable exiting the safe haven configuration,” mission control told the crew.
“Don’t we have help from our counterparts?” Crew-12 commander Jessica Meir asked mission control. “Assert,” mission control responded.
those counterparts—Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev—They were working on the leak area at the opposite end of the station, about 200 feet away from the Crew Dragon.
Stevens soon published a update in Xwriting that Roscosmos had “paused” “structural repair efforts” within the PrK to take more measurements and evaluate data. “We look forward to working with Roscosmos on a collaborative approach to address the leaks,” Stevens added.
Ars asked two NASA spokespeople for details about the proposed leak repair and why the agency decided the repair was risky enough to order American crew members onto the Crew Dragon lifeboat. They did not provide answers to these questions at the time of this publication, but we will add any information we receive to this story.
