KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — A leak in the International Space Station forced NASA managers to wake up crew members late last night.

NASA said astronaut Chris Cassidy and two Russian cosmonauts were told to move into the Russian segment of the ISS to isolate the leak.

The space agency said the leak has been an issue for quite some time, but just recently officials noticed an increase in the leak rate, including last night.

After tests were conducted, NASA suspects the leak is coming from the Russian side of the ISS. Now they’ll work with their Russian counterparts to figure out how to fix the leak.

NASA says the crew at the ISS, plus the astronauts scheduled to head to the space station next month as part of SpaceX's first official crewed mission are in no immediate danger. That launch is set to blast off from Kennedy Space Center at 2:40 a.m. EDT October 31.

Last week, the ISS had to move out of the way of an unknown piece of space debris that was expected to come within a mile of the station, CNN reported. Flight controllers used the thrusters on a docked cargo ship to nudge the ISS away from the debris.

The three ISS crew members were told to stay in the Russian side of the space station as "part of the safe haven procedure out of an abundance of caution," NASA said.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said on Twitter that the ISS has had to move out of the way of debris three times this year.

"Debris is getting worse! Time for Congress to provide @CommerceGov with the $15 mil requested by @POTUS for the Office of Space Commerce," his tweet said.

Civic duty from space

This election season, NASA astronauts at the ISS will go a step beyond voting by mail by casting their vote by email.

That's how astronauts Shannon Walker, Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Kate Rubins will be able to vote from space on Election Day.

"Actually I voted in space the last time I was there, so I’m pretty well familiar with the process," Walker told Spectrum News. "NASA has worked with the various election officials for the counties that we are voting from. And so on the day of the election, they will email up a ballot to us, it will be a PDF ballot, we will fill out our election choices, and we will email it back down to the election officials who will then put it into the system, so it’s actually a pretty straight forward process."

Rubins will launch from Kazakhstan before Walker, Hopkins, Glover and a Japanese astronaut launch from Kennedy Space Center on October 31.