cheval gültig cheval On Thursday, Russian and NASA engineers were looking into a coolant leak from a Soyuz crew capsule that was docked to the International Space Station (ISS). The leak may have been caused by a small meteorite.
The coolant leak made it so that two Russian cosmonauts couldn’t go on a spacewalk on Wednesday at the last minute. It could also affect how the three crew members get back to Earth.
Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, and NASA, the US space agency, both said that the leak on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft did not put the astronauts and cosmonauts on the ISS in any danger.
Related: Four astronauts come back from the International Space Station in a SpaceX capsule.
NASA said, “The crew on the space station is safe and was not in danger during the leak.”
It said that people on the ground were looking at “the fluid and its possible effects on the Soyuz spacecraft.”
NASA said, “NASA and Roscosmos will continue to work together to figure out the next step based on the analysis that is still going on.”
Sergei Krikalev, a former cosmonaut who now runs Roscosmos’s crewed space flight programme, told the TASS news agency that a small meteorite may have hit Soyuz MS-22 and caused the leak.
“A small piece of space debris could have gotten into the radiator and caused the leak,” Krikalev told TASS. “Changes in the way the weather works could be a result.”
“No other changes have been found in the telemetric parameters of the Soyuz spacecraft or the ISS station on either the Russian or American segments,” Krikalev said.
In September, the Soyuz MS-22 took Sergei Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin, and Frank Rubio from Russia and NASA to the ISS.
Soyuz MS-22 is supposed to bring them back to Earth in March. If it can’t, another ship would have to be sent to the ISS.
When the leak was found, Prokopyev and Petelin were getting ready for a space walk on Wednesday.
Roscosmos said, “The crew said that the ship’s diagnostic system alarm went off, which meant that the cooling system pressure dropped.” “Right now, all of the ISS and ship’s systems are working normally, and the crew is safe.”
White particles
NASA said that the leak happened at the end of Soyuz MS-22, which is attached to the ISS.
White particles that looked like snowflakes were seen coming out of the back of the ship for hours on NASA TV.
Along with Rubio, Prokopyev, and Petelin, there are four other astronauts and cosmonauts on the space station right now.
Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann from NASA, Koichi Wakata from Japan, and Anna Kikina from Russia all went to the ISS on a SpaceX spacecraft in October.
Related: In a test flight without people on board, Boeing’s Starliner capsule docks with the space station.
Since Moscow’s attack on Ukraine began in February and the West put sanctions on Russia, ties between the two countries have been strained. Space is one area where Moscow and Washington sometimes work together.
After competing in the Space Race during the Cold War, the US and Russia worked together more in 1998, when the ISS was launched.
