Late Wednesday night, the two astronauts were preparing to exit the space station into outer space when they noticed a coolant leak from the spacecraft docked in the Russian sector of the space station, MTI wrote.
According to NASA’s Johnson Space Center, neither Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petlin nor the other ISS astronauts were in danger. The two Russians had just put on their protective suits and were getting squeezed, when they were on the live cam screen The image of the leak appeared.
Legendary former Russian Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, director of Roscosmos’ manned spaceflight program, said a meteorite that hit one of the coolants of the Soyuz MSZ-22 spacecraft may have caused a coolant leak.
The statement from Krikalev stated that this malfunction may affect the performance of the spacecraft’s cooling system and the temperature of the engine room, but does not endanger the crew.
Krikalev said Russian flight controllers were assessing the situation and the readings of thermometers on the Soyuz.
There are no other changes in the parameters of the Soyuz and the space station, so the crew is not in danger.
Spacewalks have been missed before
Russian cosmonauts had to cancel their spacewalk for the second time. First, on November 25, they wanted to move a coolant from one module on the International Space Station to another. At that time, in connection with the cooling pumps of the Russian-made Orlan space suit for astronauts There was a problem.
On Wednesday night, experts on Earth watched in a live video broadcast that liquid and particles were pouring out from the Soyuz MSZ-22 spacecraft that carried Prokopyev, Betlin and American Frank Rubio to the space station on September 21, while the pressure dropped. It was also discovered. The leak did not stop after hours.
NASA said the two astronauts preparing for the spacewalk repressurized the airlock, removed their spacesuits and returned to the International Space Station.
Russian and US space agencies plan to investigate the impact of the leak on the Soyuz.
Astronauts usually return to Earth in the same spacecraft in which they arrived at the space station after about half a year. The Soyuz return is scheduled for the end of March 2023. Should the spacecraft become damaged and unavailable, there are several – unspecified – backup solutions available, such as sending a new spacecraft for the crew.
(Cover photo: NASA/Roscosmos/Handout/REUTERS)
