Another Russian spacecraft docked to the space station is leaking

Russia’s state-owned space company, Roscosmos, reported Saturday {that a} Progress provide ship connected to the International Space Station has misplaced strain in its exterior cooling system.

In its assertion, Roscosmos mentioned there was no risk to the seven crew members on board the orbiting laboratory. NASA, too, mentioned the hatch between the Progress MS-21 car and the space station was open. Notably, the incident with the provide ship got here inside hours of the secure docking of one other Progress ship, MS-22, which is in good well being.

Although the preliminary Roscosmos assertion was imprecise about the depressurization occasion, Dmitry Strugovets, a former head of space company Roscosmos’ press service, later clarified it was a coolant leak. “All of the coolant has leaked out,” he mentioned through Telegram.

This is the second Russian spacecraft to undergo a cooling system leak in lower than two months at the space station.

Déjà vu

On December 14 2022, as two cosmonauts have been making ready to conduct a spacewalk exterior the space station, the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked close by started to leak uncontrollably from its exterior cooling loop. This system carries warmth away from the inside of the spacecraft.

This Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft had been due to deliver cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, in addition to NASA’s Frank Rubio, again to Earth in March. Russian engineers ultimately declared {that a} micrometeorite had struck the exterior cooling loop of the spacecraft, and deemed it unsafe to fly residence.

In January, officers from Roscosmos and NASA mentioned a alternative Soyuz spacecraft will launch to and autonomously dock with the station in February. The crew that will have flown in the broken Soyuz MS-22 car, together with Rubio, will as an alternative fly residence on this Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft later in 2023. The leaky Soyuz MS-22 car will make an autonomous return to Earth, bereft of crew, probably in March.

It is not clear how instantly the leaky Progress and Soyuz spacecraft are associated. According to one NASA supply, nevertheless, there was some preliminary information acquired from the Progress car that indicated an identical cooling system difficulty. External cameras confirmed flakes transferring away from the Progress car—frozen coolant—related to that noticed with Soyuz MS-22.

Growing record of failures

Roscosmos mentioned Saturday the Progress incident “will have no impact on the future station program.” This is probably true for Progress MS-21, not less than. The spacecraft already has been full of trash and different materials to be faraway from the station, and was due to depart subsequent week, burning up in Earth’s ambiance throughout reentry.

However, it appears too early to make such a conclusion for future missions. A essential query is what induced the depressurization occasion noticed Saturday. It appears inconceivable {that a} second micrometeorite would have struck as second Russian spacecraft in lower than two months. This raises doubts about whether or not the Soyuz MS-22 failure was certainly a micrometeorite difficulty—Russia has by no means launched photographs of the affect website—and as an alternative maybe a producing defect.

Just a few hours after the Progress depressurization Saturday there are extra questions than solutions, however none of this may consolation NASA because it companions with Russia to proceed working the space station. This newest Soyuz and Progress failures are simply two in a protracted line of latest points, together with the Nauka module’s misfiring thrusters in 2021, a Soyuz booster failure in 2018 that compelled Aleksey Ovchinin and Nick Hague to make an emergency return to Earth, or one other leaky Soyuz car.

These are the sorts of issues that one would possibly count on from a space business in Russia that is reliant on growing older infrastructure, growing older know-how, and high quality management points due to insufficient budgets.