During a spacewalk to investigate the recent coolant leak on the International Space Station, two cosmonauts found a number of small holes in the affected radiator that look as if they had been drilled. This emerges from the live broadcast of the field mission by Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Tschub. On Wednesday, the two of them also discovered drops of leaking coolant; a particularly large one could not be removed with the tools they had brought with them. Instead, one of the cosmonauts involved was asked to leave the scene immediately. He had to leave a tether outside the space station that was possibly contaminated with ammonia.
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Further coolant supply cut off
It is unclear what the holes in the panels of the damaged reserve cooler are. Kononenko took numerous photos of this, which are now being evaluated. During the mission, the cosmonauts should primarily concern themselves with cutting off the ammonia supply to the radiator where the most recent leak was discovered. Once they had done that, they examined the equipment and not just discovered the holes. Several drops were also found; Kononenko had actually wanted to remove possible residue with a towel. A drop on a connection was probably too big for that, and a tether also took a bit of damage. In order not to take any risks, he had to separate it and pack it safely.
In NASA’s brief summary The events of the external mission are not discussed in great detail, so it remains unclear how serious the observations of the two cosmonauts are. As part of the spacewalk, which lasted almost eight hours, Kononenko and Tschub installed a new antenna and released a small nanosatellite. He was actually supposed to test a solar sail, but it seems as if it didn’t work out. The next space mission is now scheduled for next Monday, when Loral O’Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli from NASA are scheduled to leave the ISS.
The coolant leak now being investigated was discovered at the beginning of the month on a reserve cooler that was attached to the Russian research module Nauka, but is also significantly older. Because while Nauka has been part of the ISS since a rather unsuccessful docking maneuver in the summer of 2021, the cooler in question was brought there in 2010 and was only attached to Nauka as part of a space walk in order to replace the main cooler there if necessary. Because it works normally, the leak poses no danger, NASA has assured. But because it is the third Russian component in just one year, it has raised serious doubts about the reliability of Russian space technology.
(mho)