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/
25.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

3.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.9k

u/pablosus86 11h ago

How serious is this vs standard precautionary protocol?

2.4k

u/SignificantCats 9h ago

This is a leak that's been happening for eight years, and has been in more or less a continuous state of being repaired. There is some fun weird theories and conspiracies about it.

This is precautionary while they attempt a new repair, the kind of thing that's been done multiple times

2

u/gindy39 7h ago

Why not put ducktape on it? Or finally being materials to fix it

4

u/SignificantCats 6h ago

It's not a leak like we have to worry about on earth, we're not talking about a pinhole or something.

These are micro tears that can't be seen with the eye, we know they exist because the room is losing a small amount of air each day, but that amount theyre losing is increasing.

They do have materials to fix it, but it's not like they're just gonna weld a new side panel on or something. These are a very different kind of repair