Astronauts at the International Space Station are working to repair a small leak that was discovered at the orbiting laboratory Wednesday night (Aug. 29). While the leak caused a slight drop in cabin pressure, it did not pose an immediate danger to the astronauts currently living aboard the station, NASA officials said.
Flight controllers on Earth began to notice changes in cabin pressure around 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT), while the six crew members of Expedition 56 were sleeping, NASA officials said in a statement today (Aug. 30).
Because the pressure loss was “very small,” flight controllers determined that the astronauts and cosmonauts “are in no danger,” officials with the European Space Agency (ESA) said in a separate statement.
The crew are healthy and safe with weeks of air left in the International Space Station reserves,” ESA officials said in their statement. Additional updates will be posted on NASA’s International Space Station blog as more information becomes available, NASA spokesperson Dan Huot told Space.com in an email.
This is not the first time a small leak has sprung up on the space station, which has been continuously inhabited by rotating crews since 2000. Another leak occurred in the station’s Harmony module (which is located on the U.S. segment) in 2007 during Expedition 16. NASA officials said at the time that this leak was no cause for concern.
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