Shortly after docking, Russia's space agency Roscosmos in Moscow announced via Telegram that mission control detected a "depressurization" in the Progress MS-21/82P's coolant loop.
Roscosmos and NASA both stated that the incident poses no threat to the station's crew.
NASA officials wrote on their blog
"The reason for the loss of coolant in the Progress 82 spacecraft is being investigated. The hatches between the Progress 82 and the station are open, and temperatures and pressures aboard the station are all normal,"
Progress 82 arrived on October 28, 2022, is now filled with trash, and is scheduled to undock from the station on February 17th, burning up in Earth's atmosphere during reentry. It's unclear if Roscosmos will delay the undocking to allow additional inspections.
A similar incident occurred in December 2022, during the preparation for two astronauts to conduct a spacewalk outside of the ISS, when Houston and Moscow mission control noticed a visible leak from the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which carried three astronauts to the ISS back in September 2022.
The leak was due to a small hole in the coolant line, Roscosmos' investigation concluded that micrometeoroid debris traveling at about seven kilometers per hour hit the spacecraft, and it deemed it unsafe to fly the crew back to Earth.
On February 19, Roscosmos will launch an unmanned Soyuz spacecraft, known as MS-23, as a replacement for MS-22. It will autonomously dock with the ISS at the Poisk module on February 21st, if there's no delay with the undocking of the damaged Progress.
MS-23 will bring the MS-22 crew-cosmonauts Dmitri Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev, and NASA's Frank Rubio back to Earth later in 2023.
Related Links
International Space Station
Rocket Science News at Space-Travel.Com
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