A Soyuz MS-22 capsule is being tested to determine if it is unsuitable for manned flight due to coolant leaks.
The Russian space agency is considering a “rescue” plan to bring the three crew members home ahead of schedule. International Space Station (ISS) After their Soyuz capsule developed a coolant leak.
Roscosmos and NASA officials said at a press conference on Thursday that just as the two astronauts were preparing for a routine spacewalk, the capsule’s external radiator cooling line punctured a small hole last week. said it was still investigating.
No final decision has been made on the exact means by which the three Russian crew members will return to Earth. That’s an option that seems unlikely to launch and retrieve another empty Soyuz, or put it back in a highly improbable leaky capsule. Coolant.
Sergey Krikalev, head of the manned spaceflight program in Roscosmos, Russia, told reporters the damage was being assessed.
LIVE: Listen as we discuss the ongoing investigation into an external leak originating from the Soyuz spacecraft that docked on December 14th. @space station.
— NASA (@NASA) December 22, 2022
If a thermal analysis assessing the temperature inside the cabin concludes that the Soyuz MS-22 capsule is unsuitable for manned flight, the planned launch of another Soyuz capsule from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in mid-March will be postponed. , the capsule would be sent to the ISS without a crew, he said.
Joel Montalbano, ISS Program Manager at NASA, said:
If so, the damaged spacecraft will return to Earth without a crew.
Krikalev said last week that the leak could have been caused by a micrometeorite impact. However, he and NASA officials left open the possibility of other reasons, such as a hardware failure or the effects of small pieces of space debris.
The ISS announced Wednesday that it has conducted a debris avoidance operation. This is him one of her three operations so far this year. The previous two times were her in June and her in October.
At 8:42 a.m., the space station performed a pre-determined debris avoidance maneuver and made additional measurements of the debris debris’ distance from its predicted trajectory. @NASA_astronaut.
— International Space Station (@Space_Station) December 21, 2022
A December 14 leak prompted Moscow mission controllers to call off the spacewalk. A dramatic live webcast from NASA showed what appeared to be snowflake-like particles erupting from the rear of the Soyuz spacecraft.
The leak lasted for hours, emptying the radiators of the coolant used to regulate the temperature within the spacecraft’s crew compartment.
NASA says the ISS crew has never been endangered by a leak.
The Russian capsule’s crew compartment now has airflow to the ISS through an open hatch. NASA had previously said the capsule’s temperature remained “within acceptable limits,” but Krikalev added that if the hatch to the ISS were closed, temperatures would rise rapidly.
The ISS is a science laboratory that spans the length of a football field, orbits about 400 km (250 miles) above the Earth, and has been in continuous use for 20 years.
The station is managed by a partnership led by the United States and Russia that includes Canada, Japan, and 11 European countries. It has been a rare place for Russia and Washington to work together since Russia went to war with Ukraine and the West subsequently imposed sanctions on Russia.
Astronauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin, who were fit for a spacewalk when the leak was discovered, joined US astronaut Frank Rubio in September in the now crippled MS-22 capsule. and flew to the ISS.
Four other ISS crew members (two more from NASA and a third Russian and Japanese astronaut) boarded the ISS in October via SpaceX Crew Dragon, contracted by NASA. They will also stay onboard, with the capsule parked on the ISS.
The leak has upended Russia’s ISS routine in the coming weeks, forcing Moscow officials to suspend all future Roscosmos spacewalks as they shift focus to the leaky MS-22. .
