Space station leak investigation prompts NASA, Axiom Space to postpone launch
An ongoing leak on the Russian side of the International Space Station has prompted an indefinite postponement of a planned human spaceflight from Kennedy Space Center, according to NASA.
Axiom Space was aiming to launch its Ax-4 mission with four private astronauts this week atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 from KSC's Launch Pad 39-A, and had already faced delays because of weather and a required liquid oxygen leak on the rocket's booster.
But while SpaceX was prepared to perform a static fire Thursday to check on the booster repairs, NASA announced the visit from Axiom Space was going on hold because of an investigation with Russian space agency Roscosmos into recent repairs made on the Zvezda service module.
The Zvezda module leaks first began in 2019, but worsened in 2024. To mitigate its effects, Roscosmos has been keeping the hatch to the module closed when not in use as a docking port for Progress resupply and Soyuz spacecraft.
The most recent repairs on the aft-most segment of the module have halted the loss of pressure, NASA stated, but still opted to delay Axiom's visit.
'Cosmonauts aboard the space station recently performed inspections of the pressurized module's interior surfaces, sealed some additional areas of interest, and measured the current leak rate,' NASA said in a press release. 'Following this effort, the segment now is holding pressure. The postponement of Axiom Mission 4 provides additional time for NASA and Roscosmos to evaluate the situation and determine whether any additional troubleshooting is necessary.'
The space station crew of Expedition 73 is made up of seven astronauts and cosmonauts, who had been expecting their population to grow by four with the arrival of Ax-4 this week for about a two-week visit.
Leading the Ax-4 mission is former NASA astronaut and current Axiom employee Peggy Whitson, who would have been making her fifth trip to space. She's commanding a crew of Axiom Space customers made up of Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla holding the role of pilot, mission specialist Tibor Kapu of Hungary, and mission specialist Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland representing the European Space Agency.
The governments of India, Hungary and Poland have not sent astronauts to space in more than four decades.
Their return to space, though, is uncertain with the leak investigation. NASA had previously said there were launch options through June 30, and then again in the second week of July, but then traffic gets busy at the space station including a replacement crew rotation flight at the end of July.
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