Stop us if you’ve heard this before, but a Russian spacecraft docked to the International Space Station has leaked. On Saturday morning, the Russian space agency Roscosmos revealed in Telegram that a Progress freighter attached to the ISS had lost cabin pressure. NASA later saying the depressurization was due to a refrigerant leak.
“The reason for the loss of coolant on the Progress 82 spacecraft is under investigation,” NASA announced. “The hatches between Progress 82 and the station are open, and temperatures and pressures aboard the station are normal. The crew, who were informed of the cooling circuit leak, are not in danger and are continuing normal space station operations.”
By space.com, Progress 82 arrived at the ISS on October 28. Before Saturday’s announcement, the spacecraft was scheduled to leave the station on February 17. It is unclear if Roscosmos will go ahead with that schedule as originally planned. Russia’s Progress spacecraft is designed to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere after completing its resupply missions, meaning Roscosmos has no way to investigate the leak on the ground. The timing of the discovery comes the same day a second Progress spacecraft docked with the ISS, and less than two months after another Russian spacecraft leaked on the space station.
In December, the Russian Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft began leaking coolant just as cosmonauts Dmitri Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev prepared for a nearly seven-hour spacewalk. Roscosmos later blamed the incident on an apparent meteorite impact. Unless there is an emergency on the ISS, Roscosmos has deemed the spacecraft unfit to carry humans. The agency will launch another Soyuz spacecraft later this month to bring Petelin and Prokopyev, as well as NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, back to Earth.
Ars Technica eric berger notes, the Progress incident raises questions about whether the Soyuz MS-22 was actually struck by a micrometeorite. Russia has never released images of the impact, and the country’s space program has a history of recent trouble. In 2021, for example, Roscosmos blamed a software bug for the Nauka misfire that temporarily moved the ISS out of its usual orientation.
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