- Two cosmonauts were getting ready to go on a normal spacewalk.
- How the three crew members will be brought back to Earth has not yet been decided.
- NASA says that there is no danger for any of the crew.
After their Soyuz capsule started leaking, Russia’s space agency says it is thinking about sending an empty spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) to bring three crew members home early.
Roscosmos and NASA said they didn’t know how the spacecraft’s external radiator got a small hole.
They have ruled out that a meteor will hit the Earth.
Two cosmonauts were getting ready to go on a normal spacewalk when the leak started.
How the three crew members will be brought back to Earth has not yet been decided.
Most likely, they will be picked up by another Soyuz spacecraft.
Less likely is sending them home in the leaky capsule without most of the coolant that keeps the crew compartment of the spacecraft at a comfortable temperature.
In September, Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio got to the station in a vehicle called MS-22.
But at the beginning of this month, it started spraying coolant into space. Nasa TV showed dramatic pictures of white particles coming out of the capsule like snowflakes.
The most likely time to launch another Soyuz, according to NASA’s ISS programme manager Joel Montalbano, is late February. The crew was expected back in March.
NASA says that there is no danger for any of the crew.
Mr. Montalbano said that air is being let out of the capsule through an open hatch that leads to the space station.
The International Space Station (ISS) was launched in 1998 and is about 400 km from Earth.
At the station, cosmonauts do tests and research that will help with future trips into space.
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