Roskosmos delayed the exit of the damaged Progress MS-21 spacecraft from orbit. About this government company knowledgeable on your Telegram channel.
“The departure of the Progress MS-21 from orbit has been delayed. The State Commission will decide on the ship’s next flight schedule today,” it said.
As Roscosmos explains, after Progress left the Poisk module on the ISS, the ship’s surface was filmed and no visual damage was found.
Now the Russian space agency is considering two options for further action. The first is to keep getting the truck out of orbit. The second is the return of the Progress MS-21 to the ISS and docking with the Russian module Prichal to determine the cause of the depressurization of the ship’s thermal control system.
On the morning of February 18, Roskosmos reported that the spacecraft had successfully left the Russian section of the ISS. After Progress MS-21 left the space station at 05:26 on February 18, cosmonauts used the teleoperator control system to rotate the ship and photograph the damage site.
The Progress location in the Progress port should be taken by the Soyuz MS-23 unmanned spacecraft – it was originally scheduled to launch to the station on February 20, but then the head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, said that the launch was delayed until the first decade of March.
The exact date for the launch of the unmanned Soyuz MS-23, which should return Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev, Dmitry Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio to Earth, will be determined in the coming days.
Before reversing progress, Prokopiev and Petelin reopened the ship, removed the air duct, removed the quick-release screw clamps from the joint, closed the transfer hatches between the ship and the Poisk module, and checked for tightness. In addition, the cosmonauts trained in creating an orientation for video capture of the outer surface of the spacecraft and retracting it in teleoperator control mode in the onboard simulator.
What happened to Progress and Soyuz?
Problems with the Russian spacecraft on the International Space Station began in late 2022. On December 15, the crew of the Soyuz MS-22 docked to the ISS reported that a diagnostic sensor had activated and pressure began to drop in the spacecraft’s cooling system.
In images from the NASA broadcast, it was clear that jets of technical liquid were pouring from the ship into space. Due to a violation in the thermal control system, the temperature on the ship began to rise. The media reported that it had reached 50 degrees Celsius, but Roskosmos denied this information – according to the state agency, the temperature remained in the operating range and did not cause discomfort to the crew.
After examining the damaged section of the ship’s hull using an external manipulator, the cosmonauts managed to find a leak in the radiator of the MCC cooling system. From the very beginning, experts assumed that the depressurization occurred due to a collision with a meteoroid – a small piece of mineral or space debris.
Later, this version was approved – the state commission concluded that the cause of the leak was a crash of parts at a speed of about 7000 m / s. As a result, the ISS crew’s expedition was extended, and Roscosmos began preparing to launch the Soyuz MS-23 unmanned spacecraft on February 20.
But the launch had to be delayed – the contour of the cargo ship Progress MS-21, which was supposed to complete its flight by February 18 as part of the International Space Station on February 11, also turned out to be unpressurized.
Borisov emphasized that the problems on the two different ships are similar, but their causes may be completely different. “Progress” was isolated from the main volume of the ISS.