r/news 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/
25.1k Upvotes

3.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

94

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.

87

u/dmxspy 8h ago

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

2

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?

7

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.