Cosmonauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) conducted a spacewalk in order to fix a leaking radiator on Wednesday.
The leak, confirmed earlier this month by Russian space agency Roscosmos, came from the backup radiator mounted on the outside of the Nauka module launched in 2021. The main radiator remains operational, but Rosmocos scheduled in a spacewalk to fix the problem.
Inspecting the source of the leak, Oleg Kononenko reported seeing a number of holes on the radiator panel.
"The holes have very even edges, like they've been drilled through," Kononenko told Moscow Mission Control, Space.com reports. "There are lots of them. They are spread in a chaotic manner."
The cosmonauts were equipped with a cloth towel to soak up any escaping liquid, but Kononenko was told to leave the area immediately after encountering a blob of coolant, which had moved onto his safety tether. READ MORE...
Russia has launched an uncrewed Soyuz spacecraft on a rescue mission to return two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut whose trip back to Earth has been hampered after their original space vehicle was damaged by a mini meteorite while parked at the International Space Station (ISS).
The Soyuz MS-23 vessel blasted off successfully from the Russian-operated Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, live video broadcast by ISS partner NASA showed. of list
Though the MS-23 is scheduled to dock with the ISS early on Sunday morning Moscow time, it is not expected to bring home Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergei Prokopyev, and US astronaut Frank Rubio until later this year.
The three arrived at the ISS in September 2022 onboard the MS-22 spacecraft and were originally to stay about six months until the end of March. But the MS-22 began to leak coolant in December after an apparent micro-meteorite punctured an external radiator.
The same thing appeared to happen again earlier this month, this time on a docked Russian cargo ship. Camera views showed a small hole in each spacecraft.
MS-23, which took off on Friday, was initially scheduled to launch in mid-March with two cosmonauts and an astronaut on board who would take over from Rubio, Petelin and Prokopyev at the space station. But without the replacement crew on board MS-23, the two Russians and the US crew member will now continue working at the ISS until September.
Officials had determined that it was too risky to bring the three back in their damaged Soyuz MS-22 next month as originally planned. With no coolant, the cabin temperature would spike during the trip back to Earth, potentially damaging computers and other equipment, and exposing the suited-up crew to excessive heat. READ MORE...
A Russian film crew are back on Earth after wrapping up scenes for the first movie shot in space.
Klim Shipenko and actor Yulia Peresild left the International Space Station and landed in Kazakhstan - to be met by a crew filming touchdown scenes.
The ISS shooting was not without drama - suitable for a film called Challenge.
On Friday the ISS unexpectedly tilted after a glitch in its thrusters, pausing filming. It was not thought to be part of the script.
In a farewell tweet from the ISS, Peresild showed off a weightless hairdo likely to thwart any conspiracy theorists who think it was all shot on Earth:
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.View original tweet on Twitter
The movie has been in its own kind of space race - with Tom Cruise. He is apparently part of a Hollywood filming-in-space project involving Nasa and Elon Musk's SpaceX.
The module carrying Peresild and Shipenko, along with cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, parachuted down to Earth at about lunchtime on Sunday in the Kazakhstan steppe.
Their departure was not delayed by Friday's glitch, which resulted in lost positioning control for about half an hour. READ MORE...
