Private mission to ISS delayed by air leak in Russian module, SpaceX rocket repair

NASA has delayed the launch of four crew members in a mission financed by private at the international space station until further notice due to an air leak in one of the Russian modules in the orbit laboratory.

The flight, organized by Axiom Space, based in Houston, was already postponed earlier this week after SpaceX engineers discovered a fuel leak on the Falcon 9 rocket which was to transport the quartet in a low orbit.

The mission was to take off on Wednesday morning from the Kennedy Space Center of NASA in Florida. A new targeted launch date has not yet been announced.

NASA said that there was an ongoing investigation into the air leak in the Zvezda service module built by Russia. The agency said it worked with the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, to “understand a new pressure signature” after the end of recent repair work in a rear section of the module.

“Cosmonauts aboard the space station recently carried out inspections of the interior surfaces of the pressure module, sealed certain areas of additional interest and measured the current leak rate,” NASA officials said in a statement. “After this effort, the segment now maintains the pressure.”

The agency said the delay would give NASA and Roscosmos a chance to determine whether additional fixes are required.

Meanwhile, SpaceX said it needed time to repair a liquid oxygen leak that was detected during an inspection of the Booster Falcon 9. Liquid oxygen is one of the propellants used to supply the rocket motors.

“Once finished – and the availability of pending scope – we will share a new launch date,” said SpaceX on X about repair work.

When it starts, the mission should last about two weeks at the international space station.

The flight, known as AX -4, will be led by the retired astronaut of NASA Peggy Whitson, who has already recorded a record of 675 days in space – more than any other American astronaut. The Shubhanshu Shukla pilot, an astronaut from the Indian Space Research Space Research Organizary; The specialist in the Sławosz Mission Uznański-WiśNewski, a Polish scientist from the European Space Agency; And the specialist in the Tibor Kapu mission, Hungarian mechanical engineer.

Shukla, Uznański-WiśNewski and Kapu will make history by becoming the first people in their country to live and work on the international space station.

During their two-week stay in the orbit laboratory, members of the AX-4 crew will lead a multitude of scientific experiences, according to NASA, including muscle regeneration studies, how edible germs and microalgues are developing in microgravity and how tiny aquatic organisms survive the ISS.

The next flight will be the fourth crew mission of Axiom Space at the international space station. The first private shipping of the company at the ISS was in 2022 with a fully civilian crew.

The price of the AX-4 mission was not publicly disclosed, but space tourists would have paid around $ 55 million per seat during preceding Axiom space shipments.