The Washington Post reports, “Russia’s space agency has identified four cracks and about 50 other “areas of concern” in a Russian section of the International Space Station, leading NASA to classify the problem at its highest level of risk and study how to evacuate its astronauts in the case of an emergency. NASA has been so concerned with the cracks that officials have negotiated a deal with their Russian counterparts to seal off the small segment and keep the hatch to it open only during critical operations, the space agency said.”
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Tag: Roscosmos
ISS Air Leak Poses No Danger to Crew According to Russian Space Officials
AP News reports Russian space officials have acknowledged a continuing air leak from the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS), but say “it poses no danger to its crew.” Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, said the leak and crew are being monitored by specialists.
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Russian Spacecraft Leak Caused by External Impact
The AP reports that Roscosmos said a coolant leak “from an uncrewed Russian supply ship docked at the International Space Station resulted from an external impact and not a manufacturing flaw.” The leak was spotted on the Progress MS-21 cargo ship on February 11, and came after a similar leak from a Soyuz capsule last December. Russian space officials “said that December’s leak was caused by a tiny meteoroid that left a small hole in the exterior radiator and sent coolant spewing into space.” The new leak “from another ship raised doubts about that theory, and Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos launched a probe into the incident to check whether it could have resulted from a manufacturing defect.”
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Roscosmos Chief Clarifies Comments About ISS Departure
SPACE reports that Roscosmos head Yuri Borisov “expanded on comments he made last week indicating the country’s intent to disassociate from the International Space Station ‘after 2024.’” In an interview with Russia 24, Borisov said, “We announced that we intend to do this not in 2024, but after 2024. In Russian, these are two big differences.” Borisov elaborated, “We must warn our colleagues a year in advance that we will do this for such and such circumstances. We have not warned [NASA] about this yet; there is no need for this. We just said that after 2024 we will start the exit process.”
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NASA Administrator to Speak With Roscosmos Counterpart Friday On Future of ISS
The Houston Chronicle reports that NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano “on Friday will exit the confines of the International Space Station for the first of four spacewalks to fix a vital piece of hardware that was not designed to be repaired in space.” The astronauts will repair part of a failed cooling system on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). On Tuesday, NASA officials indicated that “the technical challenges of the mission…rival those of any previous spacewalk, including the Hubble Space Telescope between 1993 and 2009.” NASA program manager Ken Bollweg said, “When they get into this area behind the debris shield, they’re very constrained, they’ll get in there with their hands but then their head, their shoulders, the rest of the suit, the work station, everything is interfering with what they’re doing within that tiny space.”
Full Story (Houston Chronicle)
Roscosmos Chief Says Russia Will Withdraw from ISS in 2025 if Sanctions Aren’t Lifted
Reuters reports that on Monday, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin “suggested Moscow would withdraw from the International Space Station in 2025 unless Washington lifted sanctions on the space sector that were hampering Russian satellite launches.” The sanctions prevent Russia from importing “certain microchip sets needed for its space” program. Rogozin said, “We have spacecraft that are nearly assembled but they lack one specific microchip set that we have no way of purchasing because of the sanctions. … This is in the hands of our American partners.”
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NASA and Roscosmos Unable to Agree on Cause and Severity of ISS Air Leak
Space News reports, “NASA and Roscosmos continue to disagree on the cause and severity of an air leak in the Russian segment of the International Space Station, one that NASA worries could lead to a “catastrophic failure” of part of a Russian module. That disagreement was brought to light during a brief meeting of NASA’s ISS Advisory Committee Nov. 13, which recounted a meeting of that committee with its Roscosmos counterpart in Moscow in September to discuss issues with the station.”
Full Story (Space News)
NASA, Roscosmos to Conduct Integrated Crewed Flights to ISS
ExecutiveGov reports that NASA and Roscosmos “have agreed to perform integrated crewed flights to the International Space Station.” The first integrated crewed flight to the ISS “will occur in September and NASA said U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio will join two cosmonauts, Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, who will launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft.” Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina, “along with two U.S. astronauts and a Japanese astronaut, will launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule.”
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