A leaky Soyuz capsule on the Worldwide House Station test-fired its thrusters on Friday (Dec. 16) as Russian engineers investigated why it suffered an uncontrolled coolant spill this week.
The Russian-built Soyuz spacecraft, referred to as Soyuz MS-22, sprang a coolant leak Wednesday night time (Dec. 14) as two cosmonauts ready to take a spacewalk outdoors the station. Russia’s space company Roscosmos canceled that spacewalk and postponed one other indefinitely because it investigates the reason for the coolant leak, which sprayed coolant particles into space from an exterior line on the capsule. On Friday, NASA additionally delayed a deliberate U.S. spacewalk to Dec. 21, a two-day slip, because the Soyuz work continues.
Russian engineers ordered the Soyuz MS-22 to fireside its thrusters at 3:08 a.m. EST (0808 GMT) on Friday as a part of their investigation. The leak has been traced to an exterior coolant loop on the Soyuz spacecraft, NASA has stated.
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“The methods that have been examined have been nominal, and Roscosmos assessments of further Soyuz methods proceed,” NASA wrote in an update (opens in new tab) Friday. “Temperatures and humidity inside the Soyuz spacecraft, which stays docked to the Rassvet module, are inside acceptable limits.”
Earlier within the day, a Roscosmos update on Telegram (opens in new tab) said that temperatures contained in the Soyuz reached 86 levels Fahrenheit (30 levels Celsius) and have been inside operational limits, in keeping with a Google translation from Russian. “This can be a slight temperature change,” Roscosmos wrote within the assertion, in keeping with the interpretation.
The Soyuz MS-22 is docked to a Russian port on the Earth-facing aspect of the station. It launched to the station in September to ship Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio to the orbiting lab. It was Prokopyev and Petelin who have been planning to take a spacewalk when the leak started on Wednesday night. By noon Thursday (Dec. 15), a lot of the coolant had leaked out, NASA stated.
Russian engineers are working to find out the well being of the Soyuz spacecraft, however whether it can still be used to return its crew to Earth as deliberate in 2023 is unclear.
Roscosmos has used a European-built robotic arm on Russia’s Nauka laboratory module on the station to examine the Soyuz capsule and reported some indicators of injury. NASA, in the meantime, will use the station’s Canadian-built Canadarm2 to examine the Soyuz on Sunday (Dec. 18).
E mail Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or comply with him @tariqjmalik (opens in new tab). Observe us @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab), Facebook (opens in new tab) and Instagram (opens in new tab).
