The leak, which he announced on Thursday NASA, was discovered in the Russian Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which has been docked with the International Space Station since September. The Americans called it “quite serious”, but it does not threaten the security of the station.
Severe fluid leak on Soyuz spacecraft
As we can hear in the broadcast shared by NASA, the failure was discovered by mission controllers who noticed a “stream of particles” coming from the rear of Soyuz MS-22. The American agency clarified 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 led to the complete emptying of the coolant tank in the Soyuz cooling system. Both Russian and American engineers are currently investigating the matter. It is also unknown whether the ship can be repaired in orbit and whether it will be suitable for reuse religion to Earth (it was supposed to bring three people from the ISS).
NASA assures that the leak did not in any way affect the safety of astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the ISS. The US agency also said in a statement it would work with its Russian counterpart Roscosmos to efficiently determine “a course of action after an ongoing analysis”. The Russian position on this is unknown (the Russian space agency website is down and Roskosmos is not active on social media).
The Russians stopped the spacewalk at the last moment. And this is the second time
Due to a leak on the Soyuz spacecraft, the Russians had to interrupt the spacewalk of two Russian cosmonauts scheduled for Thursday. The leak began an hour and 40 minutes before the walk was scheduled to start. The cosmonauts were already wearing space suits and were inside the airlock, waiting for it to be depressurized. Eventually, the room filled with air again and the cosmonauts returned to the ISS.
The walk was supposed to last 6 hours and 40 minutes and was postponed for the second time. Previously, it was scheduled to take place in November, but was canceled due to the discovery of a flaw in the cosmonauts’ suits.
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