The transfer vestibule on the Russian Zvezda service module has been leaking since 2019, and a postponed saw cut repair follows an order for NASA's five person crew to shelter in place on June 5.
For seven years, Roscosmos has been trying to seal a slow air leak in a small transfer section of the International Space Station. The cracks, first reported in September 2019, sit in a vestibule that connects a docking port to the Zvezda service module, the Russian-built heart of the station's living quarters. Multiple sealing attempts have failed. On June 5, 2026, the situation escalated: NASA ordered its five crew members to shelter in place while Roscosmos prepared to cut a load-bearing bracket with a saw. The repair was later postponed. Now the postponement is raising a different question, whether Russia is preparing to simply give up on the module rather than keep trying to fix it.
That reading comes from reporting by Gizmodo's Passant Rabie, who framed the postponement as a possible signal that Roscosmos is preparing to abandon the Zvezda leak repair after years of failed attempts. It is an editorial framing, not a confirmed policy shift. Roscosmos has not publicly announced a decommissioning of the transfer vestibule, and NASA has not characterized the leak as unfixable. But the timeline of failed repairs, the postponed saw-cut, and the shelter-in-place order together suggest the partnership is reaching a decision point on a problem it has not been able to solve.
The leak is small in absolute terms but persistent. Cracks in the transfer vestibule have been bleeding air since 2019, and the rate has been described as growing, with reporting citing a roughly doubled loss rate reaching a little over two pounds of air per day by 2024. The loss remains manageable for the station's life-support systems, but it is significant enough that NASA has placed it in the agency's highest risk tier, and the problem is no longer being treated as routine maintenance. Every prior attempt to seal the cracks has held for a while and then failed.
The June 5 escalation turned a chronic engineering problem into a crew-safety story. NASA's five-person crew was told to shelter in their respective segments while Roscosmos prepared to physically cut into the structure with a saw to reach and remove a load-bearing bracket near the leak site. Cutting a structural element on a pressurized module is the kind of operation engineers would normally avoid. Roscosmos postponed the procedure. The agency has not explained publicly what comes next.
What "abandoning" the module would actually mean is more involved than simply walking away. The Zvezda service module, launched in July 2000 as the station's early core, provides Russian crew quarters, life support, and propulsion. The leaking transfer section sits between a docking port and the main hull. Sealing it off permanently would be a structural decision that affects how cargo and crews reach the Russian side of the station, and how the partnership is divided as the ISS approaches the end of its operational life.
For now, the crew is safe, the air is still breathable, and the leak is still small. What has changed is the implicit acknowledgment, buried in the postponement of a saw-cut repair, that the seven-year effort to seal the cracks may have run out of practical options. The next move belongs to Roscosmos. Whether that move is another patch or a permanent seal on a section of an almost 28-year-old station will say a lot about how the ISS partnership handles its slowest-moving crisis.