Cosmonauts find leak in Russian spacecraft at ISS again

Another coolant leak has been found on a Russian spacecraft. It concerns a Progress 82 freighter that was docked at the ISS. The cause of the leak is still under investigation, according to NASA. The crew at the station are reportedly not in danger.

The loss of pressure in the coolant system forced the airlock to the ship to be closed, isolating Progress 82 from the overall volume of the ISS, according to the Russian space agency Roscosmos. According to NASA this leak has no consequences for further space operations and the temperature and pressure on board the ISS are at normal levels. The connection of Progress 83 to the ISS could also take place as planned a few hours later.

The Progress 82 freighter, also known as the Progress MS-21, is scheduled to leave the space station on February 17. It is unclear whether this leak will delay those plans. The cargo ship, which is full of waste, will then burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere and end up in the Pacific Ocean. It is therefore no longer possible to investigate the leak further.

There was also a leak in a Russian spacecraft in December. Then it concerned a leak in the cooling circuit on the outside of the Soyuz MS-22 capsule. As a result, a planned spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts was canceled and they were stranded on the space station. The intention is to collect them at the end of February.

Roscosmos said at the time that the Soyuz leak was the result of a micrometeorite. Due to this similar leak, that claim is now being questioned by some experts. Jonathan McDowell, astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, suspects that quality problems are the real cause. Eric Berger of ArsTechnica also has doubts whether it was not a production error, partly because Russia never released photos of the impact.