Russia will dispose of a leaky supply ship docked at the International Space Station this weekend, according to NASA, which could burn up over the Pacific.
Managers of the Russian space agency Roscosmos have decided to bring back the Progress 82 cargo capsule with engine firing scheduled for 10:15 pm on Saturday.They made the decision after undocking the ship(opens in new tab) Take a closer look at your radiators on Friday night.
Astronauts do not board a deorbiting spacecraft because it is not intended for passengers. NASA said the ship was carrying garbage(opens in new tab).
A space station is leaking water. NASA and Russia have revealed why.
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The send off follows the discovery of a leak in the coolant onboard the spacecraft on February 11th.(opens in new tab)becoming the second Russian spacecraft to cause a leak on the space station in the past two months.
In December 2022, a Soyuz capsule carrying people also suffered a coolant leak that prevented three crew members from boarding. After investigating the initial leak, Russian and U.S. space officials believed it was punctured by micrometeoroids smaller than the tip of a sharp pencil, rather than a manufacturing defect.Coolant Penetrating Space, Caught in Live Video(opens in new tab)was intended to keep the cabin at a comfortable temperature.
But officials have yet to elaborate on the culprit of the cargo ship leak.
“The entire NASA and Roscosmos teams are working together to investigate the cause of this situation and will continue to do so,” Jeff Arend, manager of NASA’s Space Station Engineering Office, said Friday. “We’ll have more details in the near future,” he said at a press conference.
“We’ll know more in the near future.”
Roscosmos investigated a coolant leak aboard a spacecraft that was scheduled to return one and two astronauts in March 2023.
Credit: NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA / AFP Via Getty Images
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Both agencies had previously determined that the leaked crew capsule was unsuitable for bringing home the three men. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio(opens in new tab) Russian astronauts Sergey Prokopiev and Dmitry Peterin, who arrived at the space station in September 2022, spent six months at the Earth Orbit Laboratory and were scheduled to return home in March.
However, it is not clear when they will return home.
Despite the war between Russia and Ukraine and geopolitical tensions between Russia and the United States, the space agencies of both countries have continued to work together on the space station.
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Joel Montalbano, NASA’s space station program manager, said in January that crew members are well aware of the news that their return schedule is still pending and that they are excited to conduct research in space and will I said I was ready to stay for a year.
“I might have to fly more ice cream to reward them,” he said.
According to newswire reports, Roscosmos said early on Saturday that it hoped to launch an empty vessel for the stranded crew on February 24.(opens in new tab)The state commission must approve the new date, according to Saturday’s Agence France-Presse report.
