(Moscow) The Russian Space Agency Roscosmos has declared that the equipment of the International Spatial Station (ISS) cannot be in danger because of the risk of a new virus causing liquid refrigeration on the son segment, the previous genre incident in the past. ‘year.
“The Naoka module of the Russian part of the International Space Station experienced a coolant leak from the external (emergency) coolant circuit, which was delivered to the station in 2012,” Roscosmos reported on Telegram.
According to the Russian agency, “nothing threatens the crew or the station.” “The main thermal control circuit of the unit operates normally and ensures comfortable conditions in the living area of the unit,” she said.
There are currently seven people on board the International Space Station: three Russians, two Americans, a Dane and a Japanese.
Exchanges with the ISS are partly broadcast live on the Internet, and at the end of the day, an operator from the control center on Earth asked part of the crew to go to the copula, an observation dome that allows astronauts to see outside.
He told them: “We see flakes abroad,” and asked them to try to confirm the “point of origin.”
“There is a leak coming from the MLM radiator,” astronaut Yasmine Moghbeli later said (Multi-Purpose Laboratory Module, which is the other name for the Nauka sector).
NASA did not immediately issue an official statement about the accident.
Frequent accidents
There have been several incidents involving leaks recently.
In December, the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which docked at the International Space Station, suffered a coolant leak due to a small meteorite collision, according to Moscow, which decided to send the MS-22 spacecraft as a replacement.
This accident forced two Russian astronauts and an American astronaut to stay on board the International Space Station for a longer period than expected. They were finally able to return to Earth safely at the end of September.
A leak similar to the December incident also affected another Russian ship in mid-February, the cargo ship Progress MS-21, which was docked at the International Space Station, but was not intended to carry passengers.
“There is a common theme with three coolant leaks,” Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and space analyst, told AFP in Washington. “One is nothing, two is a coincidence, three is something regular.”
“This highlights the deteriorating reliability of Russian space systems,” he added. “Perhaps it is the cooling system subcontractor that needs to work together, or perhaps it reflects something more systematic about the quality controls in the Russian program.”
The Russian space sector, which has historically been the country’s pride, has been facing difficulties for years, between lack of funding, failures and corruption scandals.
The International Space Station is one of the few areas of cooperation that continues between Moscow and Washington since the start of the Russian attack in Ukraine and the international sanctions that followed.
