Four NASA Crew-12 mission astronauts on the station – two US astronauts, one French astronaut, and one Russian cosmonaut – received instructions from NASA Mission Control Center at 9:04 a.m. ET (4:04 p.m. Lithuanian time) on Monday to board the Crew Dragon spacecraft docked to the station and put on their spacesuits in case of an emergency evacuation due to an air leak, a NASA spokesperson said.
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NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos – the two main operators of the station – have been discussing the causes of minor air leaks and possible solutions in the Russian Zvezda service module, which is the main structure of the football field-sized laboratory, for several months.
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According to a senior NASA official who asked not to be named, the air leak has been relatively small in recent months, but on Monday it increased from one pound of air per day to two pounds.
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