After increasing air leaks in the Russian part of the International Space Station (ISS), NASA has ordered the astronauts present there to hide in their spacecraft and be ready for possible evacuation. The Russian crew is currently trying to fix this leak. Crew-12 mission passengers received orders to wear spacesuits According to NASA, four astronauts of the ‘Crew-12’ mission present at the station received this instruction from NASA Mission Control at 9:04 am (ET) on Monday. These include two American astronauts Jack Hathaway and Jessica Meir, a French astronaut Sophie Adenot and a Russian cosmonaut Andrei Fedayev. They have been asked to go inside the ‘Crew Dragon’ spacecraft attached to the station and wear their spacesuits, so that in case of an emergency if air leaks increase, they can be evacuated immediately. Leaks are happening in Russia’s ‘Zvezda Service Module’ The two main operators of the space station – NASA and Russia’s space agency Roscosmos – have been discussing the causes and possible solutions to the small air leaks happening in Russia’s ‘Zvezda Service Module’ for the past several months. This module is a very important part of this entire laboratory (ISS) the size of a football field. The leak doubled in one day, the loss increased from 1 pound to 2 pounds. A senior NASA official said that this air leak was much less in recent months. But the situation suddenly worsened on Monday, when the amount of air leaking increased from one pound to two pounds (almost double) a day. For this reason, NASA had to issue this alert for the safety of the passengers. What is the International Space Station? The International Space Station is a large spacecraft revolving around the Earth. Astronauts live in it and experiment in micro gravity. It travels at a speed of 28,000 kilometers per hour. It completes its revolution around the Earth every 90 minutes. 5 space agencies have jointly created it. The first piece of the station was launched in November 1998.
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