Cosmonauts had to cancel the “space walk”.
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A significant coolant leak was detected on one of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked to the International Space Station. Because of this, the astronauts had to cancel their spacewalk as controllers on Earth worked to fix the problem, according to Space.com.
The leak was registered on December 14, about an hour and a half before Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin were supposed to go into space. The “space walk” was supposed to last six hours and 40 minutes, but it was canceled when the astronauts had already put on their spacesuits and began the process of depressurizing the airlock.
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Cameras installed outside the space station filmed a continuous stream of frozen flakes being ejected from the Soyuz spacecraft into space. The likely source of the leak is the external cooling system located next to the aft part of the ship.
NASA said that the cause of the leak is still unknown. Russian specialists continue to investigate what could have caused it.
Dispatchers assured the ISS crew that the station itself was safe, but the leak continued for at least three hours.
Russian cosmonaut Anna Kykina on board space station used a European robotic manipulator on the Russian segment to inspect the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft while engineers at the Russian Flight Control Center in Moscow reviewed its telemetry and data.
As a reminder, in October, the ISS had to turn on its engine and perform a maneuver to avoid a collision with a satellite fragment, which Russia detonated during anti-satellite tests in November 2021.
