Roscosmos permanently seals leaking Zvezda transfer chamber on ISS
Per RussianSpaceWeb, an unstoppable leak forces Roscosmos to permanently seal Zvezda's transfer chamber, changing how Progress ships dock.
what happened
Per RussianSpaceWeb, Roscosmos has decided to permanently close the Transfer Chamber (PrK) on the ISS's Zvezda service module because of an unstoppable air leak, with the change taking effect starting with the Progress MS-36 cargo mission planned for November 24, 2026. Future Progress ships will unload cargo through the Poisk module's hatches instead of the PrK, then redock to the PrK's aft port solely to perform engine firings for the station's orbit corrections.
why it matters
Zvezda's transfer-chamber leak is one of the ISS's oldest structural problems, patched repeatedly by Roscosmos since 2019; making the closure permanent rather than temporary is a visible sign the station's Russian segment is degrading past repair, feeding NASA's case for retiring the ISS on schedule. For the companies building its commercial successors, Axiom, Vast and Starlab, and for SpaceX, which holds NASA's contract to deorbit the station, every irreversible failure on the Russian segment shortens the runway for a clean handover to commercial low Earth orbit destinations.