- NASA says none of the seven members of the current International Space Station (ISS) crew was ever in any danger.
- Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dimitri Petelin were getting ready for a spacewalk to move a radiator from one module to another.
- Astronaut Navias said that it was too soon to know how a leak in the Soyuz spacecraft might affect the spacecraft’s safety.
A routine spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) was called off as it was about to begin after flight controllers noticed a stream of liquid spewing from a docked Soyuz spacecraft, a NASA webcast showed.
The spray of fluid, which was visible in NASA’s live video feed as a torrent of snowflake-like particles emanating from the rear section of the Soyuz MS-22 capsule, was described by a NASA commentator as a coolant leak.
NASA said none of the seven members of the current International Space Station (ISS) crew — three Russian cosmonauts, three US NASA astronauts and a Japanese astronaut — was ever in any danger.
Tonight’s spacewalk with two cosmonauts has been cancelled as mission controllers evaluate an observed leak on the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship. More… https://t.co/RhlT1kPS7L pic.twitter.com/MyiKMDCGeA
— International Space Station (@Space_Station) December 15, 2022
Two of the cosmonauts, crew commander Sergey Prokopyev and flight engineer Dimitri Petelin, were getting ready for a spacewalk to move a radiator from one module on the Russian part of the ISS to another. This is when the accident happened.
An official for Russia’s mission control operations near Moscow could be heard on the radio telling Prokopyev and Petelin that their spacewalk would have to be cancelled while engineers tried to figure out what was leaking and where it was coming from.
Rob Navias, who was commenting on the livestream from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, also said that the spacewalk was cancelled because of the leak, which he said started at 7:45 pm EST (0145 GMT Thursday).
Tonight’s spacewalk with cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin is cancelled as mission controllers evaluate the impact of a coolant leak seen on the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship. The space station is in good condition and the Expedition 68 crew is safe. pic.twitter.com/olEblc4NEO
— International Space Station (@Space_Station) December 15, 2022
Navias said that the Soyuz spacecraft arrived at the ISS in September with Prokopyev, Petelin, and US astronaut Frank Rubio. Since then, it has been attached to the side of the orbital laboratory that faces Earth.
Navias said that the Wednesday spacewalk was postponed in late November because the cooling pumps in the cosmonauts’ spacesuits were not working properly.
NASA says that this spacewalk would be the 12th this year at the ISS and the 257th in the 22-year history of the platform, which has been used to build, fix, and improve things.
Navias said that it was too soon to know how the leak might affect the spacecraft’s safety or if it might make it hard for the crew to get back to Earth when their mission is over.
Five other spacecraft are docked at the space station: two SpaceX capsules (a Crew Dragon and a Cargo Dragon), a Northrop Grumman Cygnus space freighter, and two Russian resupply ships, Progress 81 and Progress 82.
The International Space Station (ISS), which is the size of a US football field and orbits about 250 miles above Earth, has been constantly occupied since 2000. It is run by a partnership led by the US and Russia that also includes Canada, Japan, and 11 European countries.
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