Russia’s state-owned house company, Roscosmos, reported Saturday {that a} Progress provide ship hooked up to the Worldwide Area Station has misplaced strain in its exterior cooling system.

In its assertion, Roscosmos stated there was no risk to the seven crew members on board the orbiting laboratory. NASA, too, stated the hatch between the Progress MS-21 automobile and the house station was open. Notably, the incident with the availability ship got here inside hours of the secure docking of one other Progress ship, MS-22, which is in good well being.

Though the preliminary Roscosmos assertion was imprecise concerning the depressurization occasion, Dmitry Strugovets, a former head of house company Roscosmos’ press service, later clarified it was a coolant leak. “The entire coolant has leaked out,” he stated through Telegram.

That is the second Russian spacecraft to undergo a cooling system leak in lower than two months on the house station.

Déjà vu

On December 14 2022, as two cosmonauts have been getting ready to conduct a spacewalk exterior the house station, the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked close by started to leak uncontrollably from its exterior cooling loop. This method carries warmth away from the inside of the spacecraft.

This Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft had been as a result of carry cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, in addition to NASA’s Frank Rubio, again to Earth in March. Russian engineers ultimately declared {that a} micrometeorite had struck the exterior cooling loop of the spacecraft, and deemed it unsafe to fly house.

In January, officers from Roscosmos and NASA stated a substitute Soyuz spacecraft will launch to and autonomously dock with the station in February. The crew that may have flown within the broken Soyuz MS-22 automobile, together with Rubio, will as an alternative fly house on this Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft later in 2023. The leaky Soyuz MS-22 automobile will make an autonomous return to Earth, bereft of crew, possible in March.

It isn’t clear how straight the leaky Progress and Soyuz spacecraft are associated. Based on one NASA supply, nevertheless, there was some preliminary information acquired from the Progress automobile that indicated an identical cooling system subject. Exterior cameras confirmed flakes transferring away from the Progress automobile—frozen coolant—just like that noticed with Soyuz MS-22.

Rising checklist of failures

Roscosmos stated Saturday the Progress incident “could have no influence on the long run station program.” That is possible true for Progress MS-21, a minimum of. The spacecraft already has been full of trash and different materials to be faraway from the station, and was as a result of go away subsequent week, burning up in Earth’s environment throughout reentry.

Nevertheless, it appears too early to make such a conclusion for future missions. A essential query is what induced the depressurization occasion noticed Saturday. It appears inconceivable {that a} second micrometeorite would have struck as second Russian spacecraft in lower than two months. This raises doubts about whether or not the Soyuz MS-22 failure was certainly a micrometeorite subject—Russia has by no means launched photographs of the influence web site—and as an alternative maybe a producing defect.

Just a few hours after the Progress depressurization Saturday there are extra questions than solutions, however none of it will consolation NASA because it companions with Russia to proceed working the house station. This newest Soyuz and Progress failures are simply two in a protracted line of latest points, together with the Nauka module’s misfiring thrusters in 2021, a Soyuz booster failure in 2018 that pressured Aleksey Ovchinin and Nick Hague to make an emergency return to Earth, or one other leaky Soyuz automobile.

These are the sorts of issues that one may count on from an area business in Russia that’s reliant on growing older infrastructure, growing older know-how, and high quality management points as a result of insufficient budgets.