Astronauts and cosmonauts on International Space Station (ISS) have fixed hole in shell of its outer wall. The ISS is large satellite in space that scientists live in to do scientific experiments. The first part of it was put into space in 1998. Last week, NASA alerted astronauts on ISS that station was slowly leaking air. Astronaut Alexander Gerst and five other astronauts started looking for leak. Mr Gerst eventually found it and quickly used simple and effective way of stopping the leak - he put his finger over hole. Luckily, the hole was only two millimeters wide so it was not major emergency, but it did need fixing.
hole was in a docked Russian Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft. NASA said it could have been caused by small piece of space junk or small meteorite colliding with spacecraft. The ISS travels at speeds of around 28,000 kph. Even tiny object hitting it can cause a lot of damage. Flight controllers in USA and Russia worked together with the crew to fix hole. The Soyuz commander, Sergey Prokopyev, used heat-resistant "space tape" and a special glue to plug the hole. These are part of "necessary space repair kit". A NASA official said the crew on the ISS are safe after the repair. He said: "The crew are healthy and safe with weeks of air left in International Space Station reserves."
