What is NASA doing to fix the leak problem on the ISS?

Work on fixing the ISS leak is still underway, with NASA and Russia now identifying 50 "areas of concern" and four cracks.

A backup cooling system leak has been ongoing since 2019 at the Russian section of the International Space Station (ISS) and is the focus of a new report from NASA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) released in September.

NASA officials told the Washington Post that they are monitoring four cracks and 50 other 'areas of concern' on the ISS. The cracks 'have all been covered with a mixture of adhesives and patches by Roscosmos,' NASA noted, and repairs are underway. However, the leak is the highest risk , at 5 on a scale of 5, in NASA's internal risk assessments.

International Space Station.

NASA astronauts also remained at the US orbital complex close to their escape vehicles in case they needed to evacuate. However, NASA has repeatedly stressed that the leak does not pose an immediate threat to astronauts.

The leak has been going on for five years, and patches have been in place since it was first discovered. Agency officials have noted that the repairs have reduced the amount of large leaks observed by about a third.

The ISS is expected to last until 2030 to serve NASA's personnel needs and also to provide commercial low Earth orbit research.

SpaceX has been tasked with building a large Dragon-class spacecraft to take the ISS out of orbit, under a contract with NASA earlier this year. The OIG said it would look into the schedule, costs and risks associated with the new vehicle and its plans for deorbiting.

The ISS is an international complex of seven modules, 109 m long, operating in low Earth orbit. The space station consists of a 460-ton platform, permanently manned by a crew, orbiting more than 400 km above Earth. It is four times larger than Russia's Mir space station and five times larger than America's Skylab.

Construction of the ISS began in 1998 and lasted until its completion in 2011 with the participation of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos), the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

When the station was first planned, NASA and its partners initially planned to operate the ISS for 15 years. However, its lifespan has been extended, and the space station is still used today for scientific research.

To date, the space station remains the greatest achievement of global cooperation , with 273 people from 21 countries having visited the station's laboratory, thousands of research projects being carried out, contributing to the development of humanity.

NASA recently announced that the International Space Station (ISS), which has been in orbit for 25 years, will officially be decommissioned in 2031, and will be housed at Point Nemo.

Located south of Easter Island and north of Antarctica, Point Nemo is also known as the "loneliest place on Earth" and the "pole of inaccessibility". It is so remote that it takes days to cross 2,700km of ocean to reach the nearest piece of land.

The ocean at Point Nemo is more than 4,000m deep. It was named after the famous Captain Nemo in the classic work "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" by the great French writer Jules Verne.

Since the 1970s, global space programs have dumped nearly 300 decommissioned spacecraft, including space stations and satellites, into the ocean at Point Nemo.