An unexplained leak from Soyuz spacecraft forces Russia to abort ISS spacewalk mission
A planned spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station has been canceled after mission controllers detected a “significant leak” from the docked Soyuz spacecraft.
A “visible plume stream” was first observed around 7:45 p.m. EST (12:45 GMT Thursday), prompting Russian flight controllers to abort the mission, NASA’s live broadcast showed.
“Today’s spacewalk has been canceled due to an observed leak of what is believed to be coolant from Soyuz MS-22,” NASA commentator Rob Navias said in a broadcast from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The Soyuz-2.1a rocket booster with the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft will launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
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“We observed a visible stream of flakes coming from the rear of the Soyuz near the instrument and propulsion module, which indicated a leak,” Navias added.
The footage showed a flurry of snowflake-like particles spraying from the back of the capsule.
The accident happened just before two of the Roscosmos cosmonauts, crew chief Sergei Prokopyev and flight engineer Dimitri Petelin, were preparing for a planned spacewalk to move a radiator from one module to another on the Russian part of the ISS.
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A Russian mission control operations official near Moscow was heard telling the pair in a radio transmission that their spacewalk had been canceled while engineers worked to determine the nature of the problem.
Specialists in Moscow assessed the nature of the fluid and what impact it might have on the integrity of the Soyuz spacecraft, according to a NASA statement.
The space agency said there was no danger to the crew of the International Space Station (ISS).
A spacewalk planned for Wednesday has already been delayed once, in late November, due to faulty coolant pumps in the astronauts’ spacesuits, Navias said.
