DISASTRONAUT

Hole eyed as crew sabotage

The hole found in the International Space Station may have been the work of a psychologically disturbed astronaut, Russian officials said Tuesday — leaving the spacemen aboard eyeing each other nervously.

The small but potentially deadly hole was discovered last week and initially was believed to have been caused by a tiny meteorite.

But Russian officials now say the hole may have been sabotage — and was even possibly drilled by a loopy space cadet who wanted to go home early.

“If a cosmonaut pulled this strange stunt — and that can’t be ruled out — it’s really bad,” Maxim Surayev, a retired cosmonaut and current member of President Vladimir Putin’s ruling party, told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.

“We’re all human, and anyone might want to go home, but this method is really low,” he said, according to Phys.org.

A drill capable of making the hole was stored on the craft, Surayev noted.

If the hole hadn’t been spotted, the six astronauts on the space station (pictured) would have run out of air in 18 days, according to the Russian officials.

“There were several attempts at drilling,” said Russian space-agency chief Dmitry Rogozin.

“There is a version that we do not rule out: deliberate interference in space.”

He added, “It was done by a human hand. There are traces of a drill sliding along the surface.”

The Russian officials did not discount the possibility that the hole could have been made by mistake on the ground.

The hole (pictured top) was detected Aug. 29, when the astronauts — three Americans, two Russians and a German — noticed a drop in pressure.

German astronaut Alexander Gerst temporarily plugged the hole with his finger, and the crew then patched it up with a rubber filling made from duct tape, gauze and a vacuum-proof sealant, the UK Telegraph reported.

Roscosmos, the state-run Russian space agency, has since launched an investigation to find a possible culprit.

“We are considering all the theories,” Rogozin said. “It is too early to say definitely what happened. But it seems to be done by a faltering hand.”