Four astronauts launch to the space station as NASA grapples with strange twist in leak issue

CNN A private astronaut mission that just took flight has exposed a new twist in a lingering and potentially dangerous issue at humanity s majority frequently visited destination in space Axiom Space Mission or Ax- lifted off from NASA s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at a m ET Wednesday after an extended delay triggered by tests related to leaks plaguing the International Space Station For years air has been slowly leaking out of a Russia-controlled module that typically remains sealed off from the rest of the space station Just now however station operators realized the gradual steady leak had stopped And that raised an even larger concern It s workable that efforts to seal cracks in the module s exterior wall have worked and the patches are in the end trapping air as intended But according to NASA engineers are also concerned that the module is indeed holding a stable pressure because a new leak may have formed on an interior wall causing air from the rest of the orbiting laboratory to begin rushing into the damaged area Essentially space station operators are worried that the entire station is beginning to lose air Much about this issue is unknown NASA revealed the concerns in a June report The agency noted it would delay the launch of the private Ax- mission carried out by SpaceX and Houston-based company Axiom Space as station operators worked to pinpoint the difficulty By changing pressure in the transfer tunnel and monitoring over time teams are evaluating the condition of the transfer tunnel and the hatch seal the message read More than a week later the results of that research are not totally clear After revealing the new Wednesday launch target Monday night NASA noted in a Tuesday comment that it worked with Roscosmos executives to investigate the issue The space agencies agreed to lower the pressure in the transfer tunnel and teams will continue to evaluate going forward according to the comment NASA deferred further comment on the leak trouble to the Russian space agency Roscosmos which did not reply to a list of emailed questions Years of leaks on the space station The leaks first identified in are located in a tunnel that connects a Russian module called Zvezda to a docking port that welcomes spacecraft carrying cargo and supplies The cracks are minuscule and mostly invisible to the naked eye hence the difficulty attempting to patch predicament areas The situation gained new urgency last year when the leak rate hit its highest reading yet And it became clear that technical teams in the United States and Russia did not see eye to eye on what exactly might be causing the issue according to Bob Cabana chair of NASA s ISS Advisory Committee during a November meeting on the issue The Russians believe that continued operations are safe but they can t prove that to our satisfaction Cabana added And the US believes that it s not safe but we can t prove that to the Russian satisfaction Neither NASA nor Roscosmos responded to requests for comment last week about how they now evaluate the safety hazard of the leaks Axiom Space s historic mission As NASA and Roscosmos attempted to sort through the issue the four crewmates now flying on Ax- remained locked in quarantine in Florida for about a month waiting for their chance to launch The private mission includes decorated former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson who is now an Axiom Space employee as well as three spaceflight novices who will become the first from their respective countries to visit the space station Shubhanshu Shukla of India S awosz Uzna ski-Wi niewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary The group is expected to be in space for about two weeks helping to carry out roughly science experiments before returning home It s not yet clear whether or how the leaking Zvezda transfer tunnel could affect broader operations on the space station While privately funded missions to the space station such as Ax- are fairly rare occurrences NASA and Roscosmos routinely send up rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts to keep the space station staffed Crew- which will mark the th crew rotation mission that SpaceX carries out on NASA s behalf is at this moment slated to take off as soon as July That crew includes NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov They are on track to spend about six months in space as is typical for staffing missions