Russia mulls early return of space station crew after Soyuz capsule leak
The Hindu
Russia's chief of crewed space programs, said the leak could have been caused by a micrometeoroid strike.
Russia's space agency said it is considering a "rescue" plan to send an empty spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) to bring home three crew members ahead of schedule, after their Soyuz capsule sprang a coolant leak while docked to the orbiting outpost.
Officials with NASA and Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, said at a news conference on Thursday they continue to investigate how the coolant line of the capsule's external radiator sustained a tiny puncture last week, just as two cosmonauts were preparing for a routine spacewalk.
No final decision has been made about the precise means of flying the capsule's three crew members back to Earth - whether by launching another Soyuz to retrieve them or by the seemingly less likely option of sending them in the leaky capsule without most of its coolant.
Last week, Sergei Krikalev, Russia's chief of crewed space programs, said the leak could have been caused by a micrometeoroid strike, but he and his NASA counterparts have left open the possibility of other culprits, such as a hardware failure or an impact by a tiny piece of space debris.
The December 14th leak prompted mission controllers in Moscow to call off the spacewalk as a live NASA webcast showed what appeared to be a flurry snowflake-like particles spewing from the rear of the Soyuz spacecraft.
Also Read | Temperature rising on Soyuz, crew not in danger
The leak lasted for hours and emptied the radiator of coolant used to regulate temperatures inside the crew compartment of the spacecraft.