On Monday, the Russian portion of the International Space Station (ISS) experienced its third coolant leak in less than a year, sparking new concerns about the nation’s space program’s dependability despite assurances from officials that the crew members were not in danger.
Around 1:30 pm Eastern Time (1730 GMT), NASA’s official live feed of the orbiting lab showed flakes of frozen coolant spewing into space. This was confirmed by radio communication between US mission control and astronauts.
“The Nauka module of the Russian segment of the ISS has suffered a coolant leak from the external (backup) radiator circuit, which was delivered to the station in 2012,” Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Telegram, adding temperatures remained normal in the affected unit.
“Nothing is threatening the crew and the station,” added the statement.
Nauka, which means “science” in Russian and is also known as the Multipurpose Laboratory Module-Upgrade (MLM), launched in 2021.
Astronauts on the American side could be heard being asked to investigate by US mission control in Houston.
“Hi, we’re seeing flakes outside, we need a crew to go to the cupola, we think windows five or six, and confirm any visual flakes,” an official said to the astronauts.
“There’s a leak coming from the radiator on MLM,” NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli replied a little later.
NASA later confirmed the events in a statement Monday, saying that “the crew aboard (the) station was never in any danger,” and that the leak was coming from Nauka’s backup radiator.
“The primary radiator on Nauka is working normally, providing full cooling to the module with no impacts to the crew or to space station operations,” NASA said, adding that the crew “was asked to close the shutters on US segment windows as a precaution against contamination.”
