Cease us for those who’ve heard this one earlier than, however a Russian spacecraft docked with the Worldwide House Station has sprung a leak. On Saturday morning, Russia’s Roscosmos house company disclosed on Telegram {that a} Progress cargo ship docked with the ISS had misplaced cabin strain. NASA later stated the depressurization was as a result of a coolant leak.
“The rationale for the lack of coolant within the Progress 82 spacecraft is being investigated,” NASA introduced. “The hatches between 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.”
Per House.com, Progress 82 arrived on the ISS on October twenty eighth. Earlier than Saturday’s announcement, the spacecraft was scheduled to go away the station on February seventeenth. It’s unclear if Roscosmos will transfer ahead with that timeline as initially deliberate. Russia’s Progress spacecraft are designed to dissipate within the Earth’s ambiance after they full their resupply missions, which means there’s no manner for Roscosmos to analyze the leak on the bottom. The timing of the invention comes on the identical day {that a} second Progress spacecraft docked with the ISS, and fewer than two months after one other Russian spacecraft sprung a leak on the house station.
In December, Russia’s Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft started leaking coolant simply as cosmonauts Dmitri Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev had been making ready for a virtually seven-hour spacewalk. Roscosmos later blamed the incident on an obvious meteoroid strike. Until there’s an emergency on the ISS, Roscosmos has deemed the spacecraft unfit to move people. The company will launch one other Soyuz craft later this month to deliver Petelin and Prokopyev, in addition to NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, again to Earth.
Ars Technica’s Eric Berger factors out, the Progress incident raises doubts about whether or not Soyuz MS-22 was really hit by a micrometeorite. Russia by no means launched photos of the affect, and the nation’s house program has a historical past of current points. In 2021, for example, Roscosmos blamed a software program bug on the Nauka misfiring that briefly moved the ISS out of its traditional orientation.
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