Russian module on International Space Station suffers coolant leak.
The Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) has sprung its third coolant leak in under a year, raising new questions about the reliability of the country’s space programme even as officials said crew members were not in danger.
The incident was reported by Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to NASA space station crew member Jasmin Moghbeli around 1 p.m. EDT (1700 UTC).
“We’re seeing flakes outside. Need a crew to go to the cupola, look toward the aft side, we think windows five or six, and confirm any visual flakes,” mission control requested.
Flakes of frozen coolant spraying into space were seen in an official live feed of the orbital lab provided by Nasa on Monday, and confirmed in radio chatter between US mission control and astronauts.
The crew and the station “are not in danger” as astronauts assess the leak, Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said in a statement posted on Telegram.
It’s the latest such leak the Russians have had to deal with in space recently, following one that sprang on a Soyuz crew capsule late last year, forcing the spacecraft’s replacement and a delayed trip home for its crew. A Russian Progress cargo spacecraft leaked coolant months later.