The Space Station Has Had Cracks in Its Hull for 5 Years. Seven People Live Up There. Russia Just Said It's Finally Time to Fix Them.

There are seven people living 420 kilometers above your head right now. They orbit Earth every 92 minutes. They travel at 28,000 km/h. And for the past several years, their home has had cracks in its hull.

Not metaphorical cracks. Actual structural fractures. In the module where they work, sleep, and breathe.

As of this week, Russia appears to finally be ready to do something about it.

The Module Nobody Wanted to Talk About

The cracks are in the Zvezda service module — the Russian-built section at the spine of the International Space Station. It houses the main propulsion system. It runs critical life-support infrastructure. And it's where air has been quietly leaking for years.

The leaks were first confirmed around 2019. Small. Manageable. The kind of thing you patch with sealant and keep monitoring.

Then they didn't go away.

Russian cosmonauts reportedly resorted to floating through the station at night — after other crew members were asleep and activity had dropped — listening for the hiss of escaping air. By ear. Like a mechanic hunting a slow tire leak, except the tire is a pressurized metal cylinder moving at eight kilometers per second above the atmosphere.

They found the fractures in Zvezda's intermediate chamber. They patched them. It wasn't enough.

The Dispute That Stayed Behind Closed Doors

Here's where it gets complicated.

According to a June 2026 report from Ars Technica, this has been a "persistent, behind-the-scenes dispute between NASA and Roscosmos." Two agencies. One station. Completely different assessments of the same question: how serious is this, really?

The American side has reportedly pushed for a more aggressive structural fix. The Russian side maintained the situation was under control. In space diplomacy, that kind of disagreement doesn't get a press conference. It gets quietly argued in joint technical meetings while the cracks keep leaking and the crew keeps orbiting.

You can track the ISS live on SkyLens right now — altitude, velocity, ground track. What the tracker can't show you is what's happening inside those walls.

Why Metal Cracks in Space in the First Place

The ISS doesn't just sit still in the cold of space. Every 92 minutes, it swings from blazing sunlight to deep shadow and back again.

In sunlight, the hull climbs past +120°C. In shadow, it drops to -150°C. The station does this 16 times every 24 hours. Expand. Contract. Expand. Contract. Every day, for 25 years.

Metal gets tired. It's called thermal fatigue, and it's physics, not negligence. The Zvezda module was designed with a lifespan in mind — a lifespan the station has already exceeded twice over.

The leading hypothesis for the cracks is exactly this: decades of repeated thermal stress fracturing the hull of an aging module. If that's correct, patching the surface doesn't address the underlying cause. It's buying time.

A Timeline That Was Never Made Public

Notice what's absent from that timeline: a press release. A joint statement. Any public acknowledgment from either agency that this was happening while astronauts were living and working aboard.

What Fixing a Crack in Space Actually Means

This isn't your kitchen ceiling. You can't call someone.

Repairs on the ISS happen one of two ways: from inside, using sealants, epoxy compounds, and monitoring sensors — or via spacewalk (EVA), where suited cosmonauts work outside the hull with specialized tools. Both approaches carry complications when the fractures are in structural joint areas.

The specifics of Russia's planned fix — new patches, a structural EVA, replacement hardware — haven't been disclosed. What we know is that they're finally moving from "monitoring the situation" to "doing something about it." That's a significant shift, even if we don't yet know what "something" looks like.

Want to understand why orbital altitude matters so much for a station like the ISS? SkyLens has a full explainer on how different orbits work and what they mean for spacecraft design and lifespan.

The Bigger Picture

The ISS was originally designed to last until 2020. That deadline was extended to 2024. Then to 2028. Now 2030 is the target deorbit date — a controlled reentry over the South Pacific, where it will break apart in the atmosphere and sink into the ocean.

Commercial successors — platforms from Axiom Space, Blue Origin, and others — aren't ready yet. There will be a gap. Which means the aging, cracking Zvezda module needs to hold together for four more years of thermal cycling, crew operations, and orbital mechanics.

There's also a geopolitical dimension that's hard to ignore. The ISS is the last major joint project between the US and Russia in space. Everything else — lunar ambitions, deep-space programs — is now explicitly competitive. The ISS is the one place the two countries still work together. And the Russian segment is literally showing structural stress.

Seven people are up there right now. You can watch the station cross your sky tonight — a bright, fast-moving dot, visible for about 6 minutes before it disappears over the horizon. The cracks aren't visible from Earth. But they've been there for years.

More space stories on SkyLens — updated daily.