Oct 9 (Reuters) – Russia’s space agency said on Monday that the multipurpose Nauka module aboard the International Space Station suffered a leak in the backup cooling system used to regulate the temperature inside the astronauts’ cabin. Announced.
Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said in a statement posted on Telegram that the crew and station are “not at risk” as cosmonauts assess the leak situation.
This is the latest example of this type of leak that the Russians have recently had to deal with in space, with a leak in the Soyuz crew capsule late last year leading to the replacement of the spacecraft and the repatriation of the crew. This followed a delay. A few months later, the Russian Progress cargo spacecraft leaked coolant.
NASA, which jointly manages the ISS with Russia, did not respond to requests for comment.
Around 1 p.m. ET (5 p.m. GMT), officials at NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston asked one of the station’s American astronauts to go to the cupola, a dome-shaped window overlooking space, and He instructed the ground team to look for what they had detected. According to the air traffic controller’s voice, flakes had occurred outside the station.
“The MLM radiator is leaking,” NASA astronaut Jasmine Moghbeli said, referring to the Nauka module in the Russian part of the station.
Coolant that leaked from Russia’s Soyuz-22 capsule in December was seen on live video feeds as flaky, snow-like particles spewing from the plane’s radiator into space. After a month of investigation with Russia, NASA’s technical team believes space debris or a small meteorite was the culprit.
Moghbeli and astronauts from Denmark, Russia and Japan arrived at the station in August aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. American Loral O’Hara and Russians Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chubb arrived on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft last month.
The station, an orbital science laboratory the size of a football field about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth, has hosted international astronauts for more than 20 years.
The lab’s interdependence remains between the two countries after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, with the United States in charge of the station’s power grid and Russia largely responsible for the engines that enable it to maneuver in orbit. It represents one of the few cooperative relationships that have ever existed.
The station’s structure has aged since it housed its first crew in 2000, and NASA is funding the early development of a privately built successor to prioritize returning humans to the moon. By doing so, he is preparing for retirement around 2030.
Report by Joey Roulette.Editing: Leslie Adler and Sandra Mahler
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