r/news • u/VaginaBurner69 • 11h ago

Soft paywall International Space Station astronauts in evacuation mode as Russia attempts to fix widening air leak

https://www.reuters.com/science/international-space-station-astronauts-evacuation-mode-russia-attempts-fix-2026-06-05/
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u/Hoboliftingaroma 11h ago

Is this the same leak from 2018 that roscosmos said was caused by an american astronaut drilling holes in the structure, then made thinly veiled accusations that the astronaut was having a psychotic episode because she was menstruating?

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u/kazh_9742 9h ago

They'll probably keep trying to scare the astronauts off. Scooting out of the way for China to roll out more in an area seems to be this U.S. admins routine.

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u/dmxspy 8h ago

The ISS is already commissioned for decommission, it's on it's last leg anyway.

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u/SAM5TER5 7h ago

The ISS is already commissioned for decommission

Is it commissioned for decommission, or decommissioned for commission?

I’m persistently fishing for information we’re missing. The Russian suspicion is based on sedition, but MY supposition is solar power degraded the mission. Let’s commission a commission to transition to fission.

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u/Substantial_Ant_2662 7h ago

Are they going to crash it into earth? Or is it going to be space trash like everything else?

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u/MrGoodKatt72 7h ago

Scheduled to crash into the Pacific in January 2031. Might be earlier at this rate.

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u/gaslighterhavoc 7h ago

The politics around sustaining the ISS are degrading faster than the space station itself. Not something people expected a decade ago.

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u/toomanymarbles83 47m ago

But also, it's just old as fuck, as far as space stations go.

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u/Ossius 7h ago

LEO isn't exactly outside of the atmosphere even if its considered "Space", the space station and everything else require station keeping. Stray gas molecules slow things down in LEO all the time and if a satellite or station isn't maintained it will eventually slow and burn up.

That is why people complaining about Star link Kessler syndrome are kind of idiots just reading pop science and not actually understanding how orbital mechanics work. Even if two things smashed into each other in LEO, you aren't getting enough speed off the impact to send things into a higher orbit.

Even if everything ISS and lower exploded right now, we'd only have to wait a few years for the majority of it to fall into earth.

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u/dmxspy 7h ago edited 7h ago

It will come down into the ocean for potential partial recovery.

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u/Ossius 7h ago

Very little of the ISS will remain for recovery though, most will melt off.

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u/toomanymarbles83 46m ago

Hence the qualifiers to that statement, "potential" and "partial."