Thursday was the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States and so far NASA has not commented on the implications of damage to Site 31 in Kazakhstan.
However one source familiar with the agency’s relationship with Russia said there are multiple concerns. In the long-term, as Manber said, this will test Russia’s commitment to the partnership. But in the near-term there are concerns about the lack of Progress launches.
Progress is key to flying ISS
Not only does this cargo vehicle bring supplies to the Russian segment of the station, it is used as a primary means to reboost the space station’s altitude. It also services the Russian thruster attitude control system which works alongside the US control moment gyroscopes to maintain the station’s attitude and orientation. Notably, the Russian control system “desaturates” the US gyroscopes by removing their excess angular momentum.
This could potentially be accomplished by docked vehicles, at a high fuel cost, the source said. Moreover, the US cargo supply ships, SpaceX’s Dragon and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus, have also demonstrated the capability to reboost the space station. But long-term it is not immediately clear whether US vehicles could completely make up for the loss of Progress vehicles.
According to an internal schedule there are two Progress vehicles due to launch between now and July 2027, followed by the next crewed Soyuz mission next summer.
The at least temporary loss of Site 31 will only place further pressure on SpaceX. The company currently flies NASA’s only operational crewed vehicle capable of reaching the space station, and the space agency recently announced that Boeing’s Starliner vehicle needs to fly an uncrewed mission before potentially carrying crew again. Moreover, due to rocket issues, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 vehicle is the only rocket currently available to launch both Dragon and Cygnus supply missions to the space station. For a time, SpaceX may also now be called upon to backstop Russia as well.
From the makers of Apollo in Real Time comes a site with 500 times more data.
The ISS in Real Time website was built by the same team behind Apollo 11 in Real Time but with more than 500 times the data from 25 years on board the International Space Station. Credit: collectSPACE.com
With the milestone just days away, you are likely to hear this week that there has now been a continuous human presence on the International Space Station (ISS) for the past 25 years. But what does that quarter of a century actually encompass?
Fortunately, the astronauts and cosmonauts on the space station have devoted some of their work time and a lot of their free time to taking photos, filming videos, and calling down to Earth. Much of that data has been made available to the public, but in separate repositories, with no real way to correlate or connect it with the timeline on which it was all created.
That is, not until now. Two NASA contractors, working only during their off hours, have built a portal into all of those resources to uniquely represent the 25-year history of ISS occupancy.
ISS in Real Time, by Ben Feist and David Charney, went live on Monday (October 27), ahead of the November 2 anniversary. In its own way, the new website may be as impressive a software engineering accomplishment as the station is an aerospace engineering marvel.
ISS in Real Time – Overview
Scraping space station data
“Everything that is on the website was already public. It’s already on another website somewhere, with some of it tucked away in some format or another. What we did was a lot of scraping of that data, to get it pulled into the context of every day on the space station,” said Feist in an interview with collectSPACE.com.
As an info box on the front page of ISS in Real Time tallies, at its debut the site contained mission data for 9,064 days out of the 9,131 (99.32 percent coverage); 4,739 days with full space-to-ground audio coverage; 4,561,987 space-to-ground comm calls in 69 languages; 6,931,369 photos taken in space over 8,525 days; 10,908 articles across 7,711 days; and 930 videos across 712 days.
Or, to put it another way, particularly appropriate for the history it spans, had this project relied only on the technology that existed when Expedition 1 began, the data archive would fill 3,846 CD-ROMs.
Statistical data about the contents of the ISS in Real Time website at its debut. Credit: ISS in Real Time
And they did all this in a period of about 11 months, but only in the hours when they were not at work writing software (Feist) or designing user interfaces (Charney) for Mission Control, the EVA (Extravehicular Activity, or spacewalk) Office, or other communities supporting the ISS and Artemis programs at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“Being inside NASA actually didn’t help at all,” said Feist. “If you’re inside NASA and you want to use data, you have to make sure that it’s public data. And because there’s this concept in the government of export control, you have to never, ever make the mistake of publishing an image or something else that you found somewhere else without knowing if it’s already public.”
“So even though we were at NASA, what we had to do was pretend we weren’t there and find the data anywhere we could find it in the public already,” he said.
As it turned out, that worked fairly well for days beginning in 2008 and onward. ISS occupancy, however, pre-dates a lot of the multimedia archives we take for granted today.
“This was the problem,” said Feist. “If stuff was released publicly back then, it was done to media on tape. There was no such thing as streaming video in 2000—YouTube wasn’t invented until 2005. So there’s just no way to go back in time on the Internet and go find the treasure trove that we know exists internally. We know NASA has full days archived on tape, but it just hasn’t been exported yet.”
Even after the change to digital photography and video, there still remained the challenge of linking each file to the day, hour, minute, and second that it was captured. For example, while the Internet Archive has been a tremendous source for the project, only sometimes do the videos it holds include the unique identifier that is needed to determine when the video was taken.
ISS in Real Time creators Ben Feist (at right) and David Charney stand inside the International Space Station control room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Credit: ISS in Real Time
In other situations, Feist turned to artificial intelligence to sort through the tens of thousands of files to learn if they were appropriate for inclusion.
“We know that NASA publishes all of its PAO [public affairs office] photos to Flickr. Right now, there are about 80,000 photos in just the Johnson Space Center collection on Flickr alone. So we scraped those, and then I wrote an AI process as part of the pipeline to figure out which of those photos were flight photos and which of them were ground photos, so that we only show flight photos,” he said.
Visualizing 25 years
As Feist was figuring out how to import all the data, Charney was figuring out how the public would access it all.
This is not the first project of its type that Feist and Charney have brought online. In 2019, they introduced Apollo 11 in Real Time, which did for the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing what ISS in Real Time does for the 25 years of human occupancy. Apollo 13 and Apollo 17 sites followed (and more Apollo missions are still to come, Feist and Charney say).
They also built a version of ISS in Real Time for NASA, called Coda, which has been in use internally at the space agency for the past four years.
Even with all of that as a foundation, designing the user interface for ISS in Real Time required Charney to wrap his head around all of the different ways people would be using the site.
“The entire site is an experience,” Charney told collectSPACE. “Just the idea that we could visualize 25 years of what went on, or that we even have every day over the past 25 years in here, is something we wanted to explore and feel the data throughout those 25 years.”
ISS in Real Time begins 25 years ago on Nov. 2, 2000, with the ISS Expedition 1 crew’s arrival at the space station. Credit: collectSPACE.com
One of the questions was what users would find if they picked a day when no data is available. How could they still make it interesting and still play as though you were in Mission Control?
“Some days have all of the media available—video and tons of photos. And then there are other days where there is no data. There are a lot of days that have at least a photo, but for others, we found there are a lot of great articles we could use so that even on a day that doesn’t have a lot of media, there is some interesting information you can access,” said Charney.
Through Charney’s design, in addition to the data coming from the space station, users can also see where the ISS was in its orbit over Earth, which astronauts were aboard the station, and what spacecraft were docked at any given moment. Visitors can also access transcripts of the space-to-ground comm audio, including translations when the discussion is not in English.
Feist and Charney plan to continue to build out the site and add more data as it is released by NASA, so it remains as close to as “in real time” as possible. They also have ideas for other data sets they could add, including the archived and live telemetry that provide the status of systems and conditions aboard the ISS.
Ultimately, it is the longevity of ISS in Real Time that sets it apart, they said.
“One thing that’s cool about this is you can go to the first day that the Expedition One crew was aboard and let it play. It will then play all the way through that day’s timeline and go to the next day, and then play all the way through that timeline and go to the next day,” said Charney. “So if you start on November 2 and have 25 years to go, the space station, as currently planned, will likely have long met its end before you reach the end.”
“So this might be the longest interactive experience ever built,” said Feist.
Robert Pearlman is a space historian, journalist and the founder and editor of collectSPACE, a daily news publication and online community focused on where space exploration intersects with pop culture. He is also a contributing writer for Space.com and co-author of “Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space” published by Smithsonian Books in 2018. He is on the leadership board for For All Moonkind and is a member of the American Astronautical Society’s history committee.
However, in its news release, NASA said it is no longer obligated to a specific number of resupply missions.
Chasing those defense dollars
In its own statement on the announcement, Sierra Space said the new approach will provide it with more “flexibility” as the company seeks to attract national defense contracts.
“Dream Chaser represents the future of versatile space transportation and mission flexibility,” said Fatih Ozmen, executive chair at Sierra Space, in the statement. “This transition provides unique capabilities to meet the needs of diverse mission profiles, including emerging and existential threats and national security priorities that align with our acceleration into the Defense Tech market.”
Although the NASA news release does not detail the space agency’s concerns about allowing Dream Chaser to approach the station, sources have told Ars the space agency has yet to certify the spacecraft’s propulsion system. The spacecraft is powered by more than two dozen small rocket engines, each capable of operating at three discrete levels of thrust for fine control or more significant orbit adjustments. Certification is a necessary precursor for allowing a vehicle to approach the orbiting laboratory.
Sierra said it is now targeting a “late 2026” debut for Dream Chaser, but that date is far enough in the future that it is likely subject to Berger’s Law, and probably means no earlier than 2027. This all but precludes a cargo mission to the International Space Station, which is scheduled to be deorbited in 2030, and presently has two more-than-capable supply vehicles with SpaceX’s Dragon and Northrop’s new, larger Cygnus.
It is possible that Dream Chaser could serve a future market of commercial space stations in low-Earth orbit, but to do so, Sierra will have to get the vehicle flying reliably, frequently, and at a relatively low cost to compete with Dragon and Cygnus. Those are big hurdles for a spacecraft that is now many years behind schedule and no longer has any guaranteed government missions.
“We wanted to have a fuel system that was green instead of using hypergolics, so we could land it on a runway and we could walk up to the vehicle without being in hazmat suits,” Tom Vice, then Sierra’s chief executive, told Ars in late 2023. “That was hard, I have to say.”
Apparently it still is because, according to Weigel, the process to finish testing of the propulsion system and certify it for an uncrewed spaceflight remains ongoing.
“We still have some of our integrated safety reviews to do, and we’re in the process with updating both of our schedules to try to understand where does that really put us,” she said. “And so Sierra’s working on that, and so I need to wait and just get information back from them to see where they think some of that work lines out.”
First mission may not berth with ISS
According to one source, Sierra is considering a modification to its first mission to shorten the certification period.
The company had planned to fly the vehicle close enough to the space station such that it could be captured and berthed to the orbiting laboratory. One option now under consideration is a mission that would bring Dream Chaser close enough to the station to test key elements of the vehicle in flight but not have it berth.
This would increase confidence in the spacecraft’s propulsion system and provide the data NASA and partner space agencies need to clear the vehicle to approach and berth with the station on its second flight. However, this would require a modification of the company’s contract with NASA, and a final decision has not yet been reached on whether to perform a flyby mission before an actual berthing.
It appears highly unlikely that Dream Chaser will be ready for its debut spaceflight this year for these technical reasons. Another challenge is the availability of its Vulcan launch vehicle. After years of delays, Vulcan is finally due to make its first national security launch as early as this coming Sunday. Assuming this launch is successful, Vulcan has a busy manifest in the coming months for the US Space Force.
Given this, it is uncertain when a Vulcan launch vehicle will become available for Dream Chaser, which was initially designated to fly on Vulcan’s second flight. However, because Dream Chaser was not ready last fall, that rocket flew with a mass simulator on this second launch, back in October 2024.
Although NASA and its counterpart in Russia, Roscosmos, continue to work together on a daily basis, the leaders of the two organizations have not held face-to-face meetings since the middle of the first Trump administration, back in October 2018.
A lot has changed in the nearly eight years since then, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the rocky departure of Roscosmos leader Dmitry Rogozin in 2022 who was subsequently dispatched to the front lines of the war, several changes in NASA leadership, and more.
This drought in high-level meetings was finally broken this week when the relatively new leader of Roscosmos, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov, visited the United States to view the launch of the Crew-11 mission from Florida, which included cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. Bakanov has also met with some of NASA’s human spaceflight leaders at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Notably, NASA has provided almost no coverage of the visit. However, the state-operated Russian news service, TASS, has published multiple updates. For example, on Thursday at Kennedy Space Center, TASS reported that Bakanov and Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy discussed the future of the International Space Station.
Future of ISS partnership
“The conversation went quite well,” Bakanov is quoted as saying. “We agreed to continue using the ISS until 2028. It’s important that the new NASA chief confirmed this. We will work on the deorbiting process until 2030.”
A separate TASS report also quoted Duffy as saying NASA and Roscosmos should continue to work together despite high geopolitical tensions on Earth.
“What’s unique is we might find disagreement with conflict here, which we have,” Duffy said. “We have wild disagreement with the Russians on Ukraine, but what you see is we find points of agreement and points of partnership, which is what we have with the International Space Station and Russians, and so through hard times, we don’t throw those relationships away. We’re going to continue to work on the problems that we have here, but we’re going to continue to build alliances and partnerships and friendships as humanity continues to advance in space exploration.”
No one is certain. The best guess is that the seals on the hatch leading to the PrK module are, in some way, leaking. In this scenario, pressure from the station is feeding the leak inside the PrK module through these seals, leading to a stable pressure inside—making it appear as though the PrK module leaks are fully repaired.
At this point, NASA is monitoring the ongoing leak and preparing for any possibility. A senior industry source told Ars that the NASA leadership of the space station program is “worried” about the leak and its implications.
This is one reason the space agency delayed the launch of a commercial mission carrying four astronauts to the space station, Axiom-4, on Thursday.
“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,” NASA said in a statement. “A new launch date for the fourth private astronaut mission will be provided once available.”
One source indicated that the new tentative launch date is now June 18. However, this will depend on whatever resolution there is to the leak issue.
What’s the worst that could happen?
The worst-case scenario for the space station is that the ongoing leaks are a harbinger of a phenomenon known as “high cycle fatigue,” which affects metal, including aluminum. Consider that if you bend a metal clothes hanger once, it bends. But if you bend it back and forth multiple times, it will snap. This is because, as the metal fatigues, it hardens and eventually snaps. This happens suddenly and without warning, as was the case with an Aloha Airlines flight in 1988.
The concern is that some of these metal structures on board the station could fail quickly and catastrophically. Accordingly, in its previous assessments, NASA has classified the structural cracking issue on the space station as the highest level of concern on its 5v5 risk matrix to gauge the likelihood and severity of risks to the space station.
In the meantime, the space agency has not been forthcoming with any additional information. Despite many questions from Ars Technica and other publications, NASA has not scheduled a press conference or said anything else publicly about the leaks beyond stating, “The crew aboard the International Space Station is safely conducting normal operations.”
Zak reported that the cosmonauts aboard the Russian segment of the station donned protective equipment, and activated an extra air-scrubbing system aboard their side of the facility. On the US segment of the station, NASA astronaut Don Pettit said he smelled something akin to “spray paint.”
As of Sunday afternoon, NASA said there were no concerns for the crew, and that astronauts were working to open the hatch between the Poisk module and the Progress spacecraft. Attached to the space station in 2009, Poisk is a small element that connects to one of four docking ports on the Russian segment of the station.
It was not immediately clear what caused the foul odor to emanate from the Progress vehicle, however previous Russian vehicles have had leaks while in space. Most recently, in February 2023, a Progress vehicle attached to the station lost pressurization in its cooling system.
Facing financial and staffing pressures due to the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine, the main Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, has faced a series of technical problems as it has sought to fly people and supplies to the International Space Station in recent years.
Enlarge/ Illustration of the SpaceX Dragon XL as it is deployed from the Falcon Heavy’s second stage in high Earth orbit on its way to the Gateway in lunar orbit.
SpaceX
NASA has awarded an $843 million contract to SpaceX to develop a “US Deorbit Vehicle.” This spacecraft will dock to the International Space Station in 2029 and then ensure the large facility makes a controlled reentry through Earth’s atmosphere before splashing into the ocean in 2030.
“Selecting a US Deorbit Vehicle for the International Space Station will help NASA and its international partners ensure a safe and responsible transition in low Earth orbit at the end of station operations,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for Space Operations, in a statement. “This decision also supports NASA’s plans for future commercial destinations and allows for the continued use of space near Earth.”
NASA has a couple of reasons for bringing the space station’s life to a close in 2030. Foremost among these is that the station is aging. Parts of it are now a quarter of a century old. There are cracks on the Russian segment of the space station that are spreading. Although the station could likely be maintained beyond 2030, it would require increasing amounts of crew time to keep flying the station safely.
Additionally, NASA is seeking to foster a commercial economy in low-Earth orbit. To that end, it is working with several private companies to develop commercial space stations that would be able to house NASA astronauts, as well as those from other countries and private citizens, by or before 2030. By setting an end date for the station’s lifetime and sticking with it, NASA can help those private companies raise money from investors.
Do we have to sink the station?
The station, the largest object humans have ever constructed in space, is too large to allow it to make an uncontrolled return to Earth. It has a mass of 450 metric tons and is about the size of an American football field. The threat to human life and property is too great. Hence the need for a deorbit vehicle.
The space agency considered alternatives to splashing the station down into a remote area of an ocean. One option involved moving the station into a stable parking orbit at 40,000 km above Earth, above geostationary orbit. However, the agency said this would require 3,900 m/s of delta-V, compared to the approximately 47 m/s of delta-V needed to deorbit the station. In terms of propellant, NASA estimated moving to a higher orbit would require 900 metric tons, or the equivalent of 150 to 250 cargo supply vehicles.
NASA also considered partially disassembling the station before its reentry but found this would be much more complex and risky than a controlled deorbit that kept the complex intact.
The NASA announcement did not specify what vehicle SpaceX would use to perform the deorbit burn, but we can draw some clues from the public documents for the contract procurement. For example, NASA will select a rocket for the mission at a later date, but probably no later than 2026. This would support a launch date in 2029, to have the deorbit vehicle docked to the station one year before the planned reentry.
Launched in 2000, the Zvezda Service Module provides living quarters and performs some life-support system functions.
NASA
NASA and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, still have not solved a long-running and worsening problem with leaks on the International Space Station.
The microscopic structural cracks are located inside the small PrK module on the Russian segment of the space station, which lies between a Progress spacecraft airlock and the Zvezda module. After the leak rate doubled early this year during a two-week period, the Russians experimented with keeping the hatch leading to the PrK module closed intermittently and performed other investigations. But none of these measures taken during the spring worked.
“Following leak troubleshooting activities in April of 2024, Roscosmos has elected to keep the hatch between Zvezda and Progress closed when it is not needed for cargo operations,” a NASA spokesperson told Ars. “Roscosmos continues to limit operations in the area and, when required for use, implements measures to minimize the risk to the International Space Station.”
What are the real risks?
NASA officials have downplayed the severity of the leak risks publicly and in meetings with external stakeholders of the International Space Station. And they presently do not pose an existential risk to the space station. In a worst-case scenario of a structural failure, Russia could permanently close the hatch leading to the PrK module and rely on a separate docking port for Progress supply missions.
However, there appears to be rising concern in the ISS program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The space agency often uses a 5×5 “risk matrix” to classify the likelihood and consequence of risks to spaceflight activities, and the Russian leaks are now classified as a “5” both in terms of high likelihood and high consequence. Their potential for “catastrophic failure” is discussed in meetings.
In responding to questions from Ars by email, NASA public relations officials declined to make program leaders available for an interview. The ISS program is currently managed by Dana Weigel, a former flight director. She recently replaced Joel Montalbano, who became deputy associate administrator for the agency’s Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
One source familiar with NASA’s efforts to address the leaks confirmed to Ars that the internal concerns about the issue are serious. “We heard that basically the program office had a runaway fire on their hands and were working to solve it,” this person said. “Joel and Dana are keeping a lid on this.”
US officials are likely remaining quiet about their concerns because they don’t want to embarrass their Russian partners. The working relationship has improved since the sacking of the pugnacious leader of Russia’s space activities, Dmitry Rogozin, two years ago. The current leadership of Roscosmos has maintained a cordial relationship with NASA despite the high geopolitical tensions between Russia and the United States over the war in Ukraine.
The leaks are a sensitive subject. Because of Russian war efforts, the resources available to the country’s civil space program will remain flat or even decrease in the coming years. A dedicated core of Russian officials who value the International Space Station partnership are striving to “make do” with the resources they have to maintain its Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, which carry crew and cargo to the space station respectively, and its infrastructure on the station. But they do not have the ability to make major new investments, so they’re left with patching things together as best they can.
Aging infrastructure
At the same time, the space station is aging. The Zvezda module was launched nearly a quarter of a century ago, in July 2000, on a Russian Proton rocket. The cracking issue first appeared in 2019 and has continued to worsen since then. Its cause is unknown.
“They have repaired multiple leak locations, but additional leak locations remain,” the NASA spokesperson said. “Roscosmos has yet to identify the cracks’ root cause, making it challenging to analyze or predict future crack formation and growth.”
NASA and Russia have managed to maintain the space station partnership since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The large US segment is dependent on the Russian segment for propulsion to maintain the station’s altitude and maneuver to avoid debris. Since the invasion, the United States could have taken overt steps to mitigate against this, such as funding the development of its own propulsion module or increasing the budget for building new commercial space stations to maintain a presence in low-Earth orbit.
Instead, senior NASA officials chose to stay the course and work with Russia for as long as possible to maintain the fragile partnership and fly the aging but venerable International Space Station. It remains to be seen whether cracks—structural, diplomatic, or otherwise—will rupture this effort prior to the station’s anticipated retirement date of 2030.
Felix & Paul, the studio known for its pioneering work in creating cinematic immersive films, is set to release the first installment in a new VR trilogy shot from the International Space Station (ISS), which is slated to offer stunning views of Earth from low orbit.
Called Space Explorers – Blue Marble, the first in the series is set to launch on Earth Day, April 22nd. The trilogy will be available for free on Meta Quest and Quest 2 headsets.
The immersive film series aims to provide a deeper understanding of our planet’s place in the universe and the importance of protecting it for future generations.
The first episode offers up an unobstructed, 360-degree view, filmed at the nadir of the ISS, which points directly at the Earth below.
The studio’s goal is to offer the viewer a sort of virtual ‘Overview Effect’, or a phenomenon that occurs when astronauts view the Earth from space and experience a profound shift in their perspective and understanding of the planet.
Founded by Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël in 2013, the studio has created a number of original immersive film productions, including The Space Explorers series, Traveling While Black, and Strangers with Patrick Watson. The studio has also created productions with existing franchises, including Jurassic World, Cirque du Soleil and Fox Searchlight’s Wild and Isle of Dogs.
Felix & Paul has won a host of awards over the years, including five Canadian Screen Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Daytime Emmy, along with numerous other awards and nominations.
You can catch Space Explorers – Blue Marble for free exclusively on Quest devices, with the first episode launching Saturday, April 22nd.
