Soyuz, according to Roscosmos suffered ‘external mechanical damage’

would be due to ‘external mechanical damage’, not better defined at the moment, coolant loss Happened 2 weeks before the shuttle cooler Soyuz MS-22 docking with the International Space Station (ISS): This was reported by the Russian space agency Roscosmos, which announced in a note on Telegram that it had postponed the decision on the fate of the shuttle and possible changes to the shuttle. Upcoming plans until January trip to the International Space Station.

A decision was expected this week, but it seems that the two working groups investigating the accident, which met yesterday at TsNIIMash (the Roscosmos science center dedicated to rockets and spacecraft), have not yet gathered all the elements for the commission to decide what to do.

according to I reported before Christmas By representatives of NASA and Roscosmos, the hypothesis that at first seemed the most likely, that of debris associated with the Geminids meteor showers, was excluded in the light of the trajectory analysis. Experts later determined that if the damage was caused by a collision, it would still be attributable to an object “too small to trace”.

At the moment, technicians are still evaluating whether Soyuz MS-22 will be able to return safely to Earth as planned in March 2023 or if it becomes necessary to send another uncrewed shuttle to bring cosmonauts Dmitry Petlin and Sergey Prokopyev along with American Frank Rubio. In the second case, it is a file Soyuz MS-23 was originally designed to deliver three new cosmonauts into orbit in March: the shuttle is already at the Baikonur cosmodrome and its launch, if necessary, could be brought forward by two or three weeks.