It is nonetheless unclear why a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on the Worldwide House Station (ISS) sprang a leak final week, however one suspect has been dominated out: a strike by a Geminid meteor.
The Soyuz car, generally known as MS-22, sprayed its coolant into space on Dec. 14, the identical day that the annual Geminid meteor shower peaked. However there is not any causal connection, NASA and Russian space officers mentioned.
“We did have a look at the meteor showers that have been occurring,” Joel Montalbano, NASA’s International Space Station program supervisor, mentioned throughout a press briefing on Thursday (Dec. 22). “Each the trajectory staff in Houston and the trajectory staff in Moscow confirmed it was not from the meteor showers; it was within the mistaken path.”
Associated: Soyuz leak could strand 3 astronauts on space station, expert warns
NASA has been serving to Russia’s federal space company Roscosmos with the leak investigation, and never simply because each businesses are main ISS companions. This Soyuz introduced NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and two cosmonauts to the orbiting lab in September and is scheduled to return the trio to Earth in March.
On Sunday (Dec. 18), NASA used cameras on the station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm to examine the suspected leak space. The survey revealed a small hole within the MS-22, which is the obvious supply of the leak. However its origin stays a thriller, officers mentioned.
“We bought some work to do with imagery to raised perceive if it was a meteoroid hit or if there was a {hardware} difficulty, and that work is in entrance of us,” Montalbano mentioned.
The now-excluded Geminids are only one class of potential impactors. It is doable, for instance, {that a} piece of space junk punched via the MS-22’s hull. Any object able to making such a tiny gap — it is roughly 0.8 millimeters huge — is simply too small to be tracked from the bottom, mentioned Montalbano and Sergei Krikalev, govt director of human spaceflight packages at Roscosmos, who was additionally on Thursday’s name.
A part of the continuing investigation is an evaluation of the MS-22’s flightworthiness. Roscosmos nonetheless wants to complete thermal analyses to find out how scorching it should get contained in the Soyuz throughout its Earth return, to see if it could actually safely carry the three spaceflyers house.
It is unclear when such work shall be executed, although Russian space officers have beforehand indicated {that a} determination may come by the tip of the month.
If Roscosmos concludes that placing astronauts on the MS-22 is simply too huge a danger, the company will goal to fast-track the launch of the following Soyuz. That car had been scheduled to carry off in mid-March from the Russia-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with three folks aboard. Quick-tracking would contain launching it uncrewed a number of weeks earlier, maybe in late February, Montalbano mentioned.
In that state of affairs, the MS-22 would nonetheless come again to Earth, however with no passengers.
“If it is determined that it is an uncrewed Soyuz, Roscosmos would plan to return the present Soyuz on orbit and acquire the information to allow them to use that for future evaluations,” Montalbano mentioned.
Mike Wall is the creator of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a ebook concerning the seek for alien life. Observe him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Observe us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab). Â
