The leak, which was announced Thursday NASAIt was discovered on the Russian Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which has been docked at the International Space Station since September. The Americans described it as “extremely dangerous” but did not threaten the station’s security.
Dangerous liquid leak on the Soyuz spacecraft
As we can hear in the broadcast shared by NASA, the failure was detected by mission controllers who noticed a “stream of particles” coming from the back of Soyuz MS-22. The US agency stated that the liquid responsible for cooling the Russian ship was leaking from the capsule.
The leak was expected to last more than 3 hours and most likely drained the coolant reservoir of the Soyuz cooling system. Russian and American engineers are currently investigating. It is also not known whether the ship can be repaired in orbit and whether it is suitable for reuse airline to Earth (it was supposed to take three people from the International Space Station).
NASA asserts that the leak did not affect the safety of the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station in any way. The US agency also announced in a statement that it would cooperate with its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, to efficiently determine a “course of action after continuous analysis”. It is not known what the Russian position is on this matter (the website of the Russian Space Agency is down, and Roskosmos is not active on social media).
The Russians aborted the spacewalk at the last moment. This is the second time
Due to a leak on the Soyuz spacecraft, the Russians had to interrupt a spacewalk of two Russian cosmonauts scheduled for Thursday. The leak began 1 hour and 40 minutes before the rally was scheduled to begin. The astronauts were already dressed in spacesuits and were inside the airlock, waiting for it to be depressurized. Eventually, the chamber was filled with air again, and the astronauts returned to the International Space Station.
The rally was supposed to last 6 hours and 40 minutes and was postponed a second time. Previously, it was planned to be carried out in November, but was canceled due to the discovery of a defect in the astronauts’ suits.
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