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SpaceWorrying leak on a Russian spacecraft docked to the ISS
A leak occurred on Wednesday on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, docked to the International Space Station and which is to be used for the return to Earth of astronauts.
If the vehicle is no longer available due to damage, possible back-up solutions, which have not been officially detailed, might include sending a new ship. (illustrative image)
Getty Images via AFP
The Russian and American space agencies were working on Thursday to assess the seriousness of an impressive leak that occurred the day before on a Russian spacecraft docked at the International Space Station, and which might have been caused by a micrometeorite impact.
If the crew members were at no time endangered, this incident caused concern regarding the return flight to Earth of three of them, scheduled in a few months aboard the vessel concerned. The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft has been docked with the Space Station (ISS) since it brought the two Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Peteline there in September, as well as the American astronaut Frank Rubio.
On Wednesday, the two Russians were preparing for a spacewalk when an alert system went off, indicating a drop in pressure in the spacecraft’s cooling system, according to a press release from the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
“A micrometeorite”
On images broadcast by NASA, you might clearly see a jet of white particles escaping abundantly into space – a priori coolant. “The cause of the leak might be a micrometeorite,” Sergei Krikaliov, director of human spaceflight for Roscosmos, said Thursday, according to a statement reported by the Russian news agency Tass.
The liquid came from the rear part of the vehicle, docked at the Russian segment of the station. The leak then stopped on its own. The spacewalk was canceled, “to allow time to assess the fluid and potential impacts to the integrity of the Soyuz spacecraft,” NASA said in a statement Thursday.
“Crew members aboard the Space Station are safe and were not endangered during the escape,” she added, later adding that inspections of the exterior of the Russian spacecraft would be carried out. be conducted using the Canadian robotic arm of the ISS.
Backup solutions?
The two Russian cosmonauts and the American astronaut arrived in the ISS on September 21, aboard a Russian rocket launched from Kazakhstan. They must normally reuse the same ship to return to Earth following regarding six months, i.e. an end of mission in March 2023.
If the vehicle is no longer available due to damage, possible back-up solutions, which have not been officially detailed, might include sending a new ship. Four other people are currently on board the ISS: Russian Anna Kikina, Americans Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, and Japanese Koichi Wakata.
All four are part of the Crew-5 crew, which arrived in the ISS in October aboard a spacecraft from the American space company SpaceX, whose services NASA hires. The exchange of flying a Russian cosmonaut aboard an American spacecraft, and an American astronaut aboard a Russian spacecraft, was planned for a long time and was maintained despite the high tensions between the two countries.
The ISS is one of the few fields of cooperation still in progress between Moscow and Washington since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, launched on February 24, and the Western sanctions that followed. The International Space Station was launched in 1998 at a time of US-Russian cooperation, following the space race the two countries had engaged in during the Cold War years.
(AFP)
