“I’ll let you know, there isn’t a instant want for the crew to come back house right this moment, that every one the methods are working,” Mr. Montalbano mentioned.
Throughout the information convention on Wednesday, Sergei Krikalev, government director of the human spaceflight packages for Roscosmos, mentioned the astronauts would attempt to stay on the station. In case of a leak, for instance, they may shut hatches to attenuate the leak. However in some conditions, the danger of returning in a broken Soyuz could be decrease than the danger of not leaving.
“The Soyuz shouldn’t be good for nominal re-entry,” Mr. Krikalev mentioned, “however in case of emergency, with additional danger, we’re going to use this Soyuz.”
Mr. Montalbano mentioned there had been discussions with SpaceX to see whether or not, for an emergency evacuation, it could be doable for one of many Soyuz crew to journey again to Earth within the Crew Dragon.
Mr. Krikalev mentioned an investigation concluded that the harm was attributable to a micrometeoroid about one millimeter in diameter that was touring about seven kilometers a second, or greater than 15,000 miles per hour. The micrometeoroid hit a radiator on the Soyuz, inflicting the coolant leak.
The placement of the leak, on the finish of the Soyuz farthest from the docking port, made it primarily not possible to try a restore in area. “You needn’t solely to restore a gap but additionally to fill the radiator with a liquid, with a coolant,” Mr. Krikalev mentioned. “And the process is so troublesome and so dangerous that a lot much less danger could be to simply exchange the automobile.”
Mr. Krikalev mentioned that primarily based on the route and velocity, it couldn’t have been a bit of orbital particles from a rocket half or another human-made object. The query was prompted partly by a Russian antisatellite weapon take a look at in November 2021 that created a particles cloud in orbit, which posed a danger to the area station.