Tom Akers and Joe Tanner are finally in the same class.

The two veteran space shuttle crew members were inducted into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame together on May 16. They could also have been in the same NASA astronaut selection group, too, had history played out a little differently.

In 1984, Tanner reported to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) to fly as an instructor pilot and then applied for the next class of astronaut candidates.

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© Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex

Humans do not just visit space; they live there, but a major part of that is coming to an end. The platform that made the longest continuous human presence in space possible is becoming history.

With NASA and its partners beginning preparations for the destructive end of the International Space Station (ISS) as soon as 2030, those who collect, curate, and study the station are now asking how to preserve the historic and culturally significant artifact, given that it is far too large and complex to keep intact.

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum on Thursday hosted a three-part panel discussion, bringing together space program officials, museum curators, an archeologist, and an astronaut to begin answering the why, what, and how the ISS might be saved. The sessions were part of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' (AIAA) ASCEND conference in Washington, DC.

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© AIAA/David Becker/PWHL

NASA confirmed Thursday that the Russian segment of the International Space Station has begun leaking atmosphere into space again. It's an old problem that NASA recently hoped was resolved.

For more than half a decade, engineers from Roscosmos and NASA have been tracking the leak rate from a small Russian module attached to the space station that leads to a docking port. The source of these leaks, microscopic structural cracks, have been difficult to find and address.

In January, NASA said that after multiple inspections and sealant applications, the pressure inside this segment, known as the PrK module, had reached a "stable configuration." The PrK module is essentially a transfer tunnel attached to the Zvezda Service Module on the Russian segment of the space station.

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Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev worked to install and retrieve science experiments while on a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Wednesday, May 27, 2026.

Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev worked to install and retrieve science experiments while on a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Wednesday, May 27, 2026.

A stubborn crack in the station's oldest Russian module is bleeding air into space, and engineers are running out of patches.

Cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev will perform a spacewalk outside the International Space Station today (May 27), and you can watch the action live.

Cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev will perform a spacewalk outside the International Space Station today (May 27), and you can watch the action live.