Russia’s house company will maintain off returning three astronauts from the Worldwide House Station as it really works with NASA to research a coolant leak difficulty that impacted an uncrewed freighter spacecraft final weekend. The Register studies: The Progress MS-21 — also referred to as 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 strain inside its coolant loop, however the station and the crew onboard are protected.
The Progress 82 spacecraft is at present being crammed with 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. 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 brought on that malfunction, though one risk that has been floated is {that a} micrometeoroid pierced an exterior radiator.
Yury Borisov, Roscosmos’s director normal, stated cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, in addition to NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, should stay onboard till March on the earliest whereas officers look at the coolant loop’s depressurization, in response to Reuters. Their house ferry had been because of launch on February 20 however that has been pushed again to March 10 on the earliest. “Officers are monitoring all Worldwide House Station methods and will not be monitoring some other points,” NASA concluded.
