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The
crew and the station "are not in danger" as astronauts assess
the leak, Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said in a
statement posted on Telegram.
It's the latest such leak the Russians have had to deal with in
space recently, following one that sprang on a Soyuz crew
capsule late last year, forcing the spacecraft's replacement and
a delayed trip home for its crew. A Russian Progress cargo
spacecraft leaked coolant months later.
NASA, which manages the ISS with Russia, did not immediately
return a request for comment.
Around 1 p.m. ET (1700 GMT), an official at NASA's mission
control center in Houston instructed one of station's U.S.
astronauts to go to the cupola, a dome-like set of windows
overlooking space, to look for what ground teams had detected as
"flakes" outside the station, according to mission control
audio.
"There's a leak coming from the radiator on MLM," replied NASA
astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, referring to the Nauka module on the
station's Russian segment.
Coolant that leaked from Russia's Soyuz-22 capsule in December
appeared on live video feeds as flaky, snow-like particles
spewing into space from the craft's radiator. A NASA engineering
team believes a piece of space debris or a tiny meteorite was to
blame, following a monthslong investigation with the Russians.
Moghbeli and astronauts from Denmark, Russia and Japan arrived
at the station in August aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
American Loral O'Hara and Russians Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai
Chub arrived via a Russian Soyuz spacecraft last month.
The station, a football field-sized orbital science laboratory
some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth, has continuously housed
international crews of astronauts for more than two decades.
With the U.S. in charge of the station's power grid and Russia
largely responsible for engines that enable orbital maneuvers,
the interdependency aboard the laboratory represents one of the
few remaining cooperative ties between the two countries
following Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year.
The station's structure has aged since housing its first crew in
2000 and NASA is preparing for its retirement around 2030 by
funding early development of privately built successors, as the
agency prioritizes returning humans to the moon.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Leslie Adler and Sandra
Maler)
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