NASA Says Nyet to Roscosmos Plan to Cut Into Leaky ISS Segment
Summary: On June 16, 2026, a sharp increase in air leakage from the ISS forced SpaceX Crew-12 astronauts and NASAs Chris Williams to shelter in their Crew Dragon, while NASA rejected Roscosmoss plan to cut into the leaking segment for inspection.
According to The Register, on June 16, 2026 the International Space Stations air-leak rate climbed sharply in a short window, exceeding the stations long-running baseline and triggering on-board contingency procedures. The SpaceX Crew-12 crew and NASA astronaut Chris Williams withdrew to the docked Crew Dragon as a precaution; the crew is reported safe and no immediate danger has been declared. As of publication, neither NASA nor Roscosmos has publicly released the specific module, peak leak rate, or detailed telemetry, and the affected hardware is reported to lie within the Russian Orbital Segment.
The station has been coping with a chronic low-rate air leak since 2019, with ground teams relying on in-orbit measurements, leak-sealant patches, and periodic hatch closures to keep the situation manageable. The latest spike is being treated by operators as an acute worsening of that long-standing issue rather than a new fault, and is the context in which Roscosmos proposed a more direct physical intervention: cutting into the exterior of the leaking segment to expose suspected cracks or seal failures and locate the long-term leak source.
NASA has publicly rejected the proposal. Agencys stated concerns, as reported, center on two points. First, breaching the pressure hull would itself compromise the existing pressure boundary, with a non-trivial risk of turning a controllable micro-leak into an irreversible depressurization event. Second, the segment in question still provides power and life-support functions for the station, and the cascading structural risk of any modification is difficult to fully verify on the ground. The technical gap between the two agencies has not yet been bridged, and the stations current response remains limited to monitoring, temporary sealing, and crew sheltering until a longer-term plan is released.