Space station leak concerns will delay visit by astronauts from India, Poland, Hungary

Cape Canaveral: A chartered spaceflight for India, Poland and Hungary’s first astronauts in decades has been delayed indefinitely because of leak concerns at the International Space Station.

NASA said Thursday that it wants to monitor the cabin pressure on the Russian side of the orbiting lab before accepting visitors. Officials stressed that the seven astronauts currently at the space station are safe and that other operations up there aren’t affected.

SpaceX was supposed to launch four private astronauts this week on a 14-day space station mission, but bad weather and SpaceX rocket trouble delayed the flight. Then the station leak issue cropped up.

The Russian Space Agency has been dealing with a cabin pressure leak at the station, and recent repairs resulted in what NASA calls “a new pressure signature”. Additional details were not immediately available.

The three Russians aboard the space station recently inspected the inside walls of the aging Zvezda service module, which was launched in 2000. They sealed some areas and measured the current leak rate.

“Following this effort, the segment now is holding pressure,” NASA said in an online update.

The private mission’s delay provides extra time for NASA and the Russian Space Agency “to evaluate the situation” and determine whether more repairs are needed.

The chartered flight was arranged by the Houston company Axiom Space, and was to be Axiom’s fourth trip to the space station with paying customers since 2022.

“This is the right thing to do,” Axiom Space’s executive chairman Kam Ghaffarian said in a written

statement.