After years of failed attempts to track down and repair a persistent air leak aboard the International Space Station, Russia’s space agency is reportedly preparing to shut down the affected section of the orbital outpost.

The leak was first detected in 2019 in the PrK transfer tunnel that connects a docking port to the Russian Zvezda module. Since then, NASA and its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, have made several attempts to patch it up, but to no avail. Roscosmos appears to have decided to permanently close the hatch between the Zvezda module and the PrK tunnel in an attempt to isolate the leak from the rest of the space station, according to Anatoly Zak , the U.S.-based journalist behind RussianSpaceWeb.

Sealed off

Next month, Russia is launching the Progress MS-36 cargo spacecraft to deliver supplies to the ISS.…