Russia’s house company will maintain off returning three astronauts from the Worldwide House Station as it really works with NASA to analyze a coolant leak situation that impacted an uncrewed freighter spacecraft final weekend.
The Progress MS-21 – also called the Progress 82 spacecraft – arrived on the floating house lab in October 2022 carrying water and different provides. After months of being docked to the station’s Poisk module, the car abruptly started spewing liquid coolant.
On February 11, engineers on the Russian Mission Management Middle detected a drop in stress inside its coolant loop, however the station and the crew onboard are protected.
“The hatches between the Progress 82 and the station are open, and temperatures and pressures aboard the station are all regular. The crew, which was knowledgeable of the cooling loop leak, is in no hazard and persevering with with regular house station operations,” NASA confirmed in a press release.
The Progress 82 spacecraft is presently being full of trash and is scheduled to undock on February 17 and be disposed of over the Pacific Ocean. It started leaking coolant simply because the Russian uncrewed Progress 83 cargo spacecraft efficiently docked with the station’s Zvezda service module.
The ISS Progress 83 resupply ship docked to the house station at 3:45am ET immediately delivering almost three tons of cargo to the Exp 68 crew. https://t.co/x7OFSlKwvS
— Worldwide House Station (@Space_Station) February 11, 2023
NASA and Roscosmos at the moment are investigating the coolant glitch on Progress 82 as it is the second Soyuz incident of late after the Soyuz MS-22 started leaking in December. It isn’t clear what might need triggered that malfunction, though one chance that has been floated is {that a} micrometeoroid pierced an exterior radiator.
Yury Borisov, Roscosmos’s director normal, mentioned cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, in addition to NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, must stay onboard till March on the earliest whereas officers study the coolant loop’s depressurization, according to Reuters. Their house ferry had been due to launch on February 20 however that has been pushed again to March 10 on the earliest.
“Officers are monitoring all Worldwide House Station techniques and usually are not monitoring some other points,” NASA concluded. ®
