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1 year ago
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Russia is considering a “rescue” program to nonstop an bare spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) to bring location 3 stranded unit members aft their Soyuz unit capsule sprang a leak portion docked to the orbiting outpost.
Roscosmos and Nasa officials said astatine a news conference connected Thursday they were continuing to analyse however the coolant enactment of the capsule’s outer radiator sustained a tiny puncture past week, conscionable arsenic 2 cosmonauts were preparing for a regular spacewalk.
The vehicle, known arsenic MS-22, began spraying its coolant into abstraction connected 14 December, with dramatic Nasa TV images showing achromatic particles resembling snowflakes streaming retired of the rear.
Sergei Krikalev, who leads quality spaceflight programs astatine Russia’s Roscosmos, said the harm was being assessed.
No last determination has been made astir the precise means of flying the capsule’s unit members backmost to Earth – whether by launching different Soyuz to retrieve them oregon by the seemingly little apt enactment of sending them location successful the leaky capsule without astir of its coolant.
If a thermal investigation – which assesses however blistery it volition get wrong the compartment – concludes MS-22 is unfit for crewed flight, past a scheduled motorboat of different Soyuz capsule successful mid-March from Baikonur Cosmodrome could beryllium moved up and it would motorboat un-crewed, Krikalev said.
“They’re looking astatine precocious February to nonstop up the adjacent Soyuz vehicle,” added Joel Montalbano, Nasa’s ISS programme manager, who was besides connected the call.
If that were the case, the damaged spaceship would instrumentality to Earth without crew.
It is the not the archetypal leak connected the Soyuz. In 2018 the module sprang an aerial leak, which Roscosmos said mightiness person been sabotage. Astronauts utilized portion to seal the leak aft it caused a tiny nonaccomplishment of unit that was not life-threatening.
MS-22 flew Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev, arsenic good arsenic Nasa astronaut Frank Rubio, to the ISS successful September.
There are presently 7 radical aboard the orbital outpost, but if MS-22 were deemed unfit, it would besides mean the ISS has conscionable 1 “lifeboat” susceptible of carrying 4 people, successful lawsuit it needs to beryllium evacuated.
Americans Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, Japan’s Koichi Wakata and Russia’s Anna Kikina arrived connected a SpaceX Crew Dragon successful October.
The origin of the harm inactive remained unclear, said Montalbano. But it did not look arsenic though the Geminid meteor ablution – an yearly improvement – was to blame, since the hull was penetrated from a antithetic direction.
“Both the trajectory squad successful Houston and the trajectory squad successful Moscow confirmed it was not from the meteor showers,” Montalbano said.
More enactment was inactive needed to find if it was caused by people occurring micrometeoroids, man-made debris successful orbit, oregon a hardware failure, helium added.
The Roscosmos chief, Yury Borisov, maintained that officials held nary fears for the information of the crew successful a unrecorded broadcast connected the Rossiya-24 TV transmission connected Wednesday.
“The somesthesia [on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft] has stabilised and has not exceeded 30C lately. Today, we person nary fears, chiefly astir the beingness of the unit connected the ISS,” helium said. “The somesthesia has stabilised aft we brought successful aerial ducts determination from the Russian conception and are maintaining the somesthesia authorities by ventilators.”
A spacewalk to upgrade the station’s star arrays that was postponed connected Wednesday took spot connected Thursday.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
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