WASHINGTON, Feb 11 NASA specialists assist Roscosmos in establishing reasons for the leakage of the coolant of the thermal control system on the Progress MS-21 spacecraft to the ISS, the press service of the US space agency said on Saturday.
«NASA specialists are helping their Russian colleagues in identifying the causes of a coolant leak on the Progress MS-21 spacecraft. Specialists monitor the operation of all ISS systems and have not yet identified any other problems at the station,» follows from issued by the agency.
According to him, the cause of the problem is still unknown. Meanwhile, as emphasized by NASA, the temperature and pressure on the ISS are normal. «The crew, who were informed of the incident, are not in danger — they continue to perform work on the space station as usual,» NASA said.
Earlier in the afternoon, Sergei Krikalev, Executive Director for Manned Space Programs of Roscosmos, said that the Progress MS-21 truck had a coolant leak, just like the Soyuz MS-22 truck in December. According to him, just like with the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, Roscosmos will analyze the possible cause of the depressurization.
Depressurization of the Soyuz MS-22 cooling system occurred on December 15th. Then all the refrigerant left the cooling circuit, and experts recognized the system as inoperable. The ship began to warm up, but then the temperature was stabilized. Director General of Roscosmos Yuri Borisov said that the size of the hole in the cooling system is approximately 0.8 millimeters, and a sporadic meteoroid pierced it.