“The reason for the coolant leak is continuing to be investigated between our NASA specialists and Roscosmos counterparts,” said Jeff Arend, manager of the International Space Station systems engineering and integration office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Russian space officials decided to move ahead with the planned undocking and re-entry of the Progress MS-21 spacecraft, which is carrying trash and other unnecessary space station equipment for disposal. The 58-foot-long (17.6-meter) Canadian-built robotic arm inspected the damaged thermal control system radiator Progress MS-21 spacecraft’s rear instrumentation compartment earlier this week, according to Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency. The coolant on both vehicles is used to dissipate heat generated by internal spacecraft electronics, and maintain comfortable operating temperatures for computers, cargo, and people inside. Russian engineers continue analyzing the cause of the coolant leak on the unpiloted Progress MS-21 cargo ship, and officials have not said whether both leaks were caused by the same failure, or if both spaceships suffered untimely hits by space junk or micrometeoroids. Russia’s Soyuz MS-22 crew ferry ship leaked coolant in December, an incident that Russian space agency officials previously blamed on a likely high-speed impact from a micrometeoroid, or a tiny fragment of rock from deep space. The timing of the leak soon after the docking of another Progress supply ship was presumably a coincidence, but it was the second time in less than two months that a Russian spacecraft suddenly lost its coolant fluid while docked at the international research complex. 11, soon after the docking of a fresh Progress resupply spacecraft to a different port on the space station. But the routine undocking took special significance after the Progress MS-21 cargo ship suddenly leaked coolant last Saturday, Feb. EST Friday (0226 GMT Saturday), keeping a departure date that has been set for months.
The Progress MS-21 cargo ship undocked from space-facing Poisk module on the Russian segment of the space station at 9:26 p.m. Russian cosmonauts took pictures of the location where coolant leaked out of a Russian Progress cargo ship earlier this month when the supply freighter departed the International Space Station Friday night, as scheduled, to head for a destructive re-entry over the Pacific Ocean. The Progress MS-21 cargo ship departs the International Space Station.
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