(Moscow) A spacewalk scheduled for Wednesday by two Russian cosmonauts from the International Space Station (ISS) has been canceled after the detection of a coolant leak, NASA announced Thursday.
The reason for this cancellation is the discovery of a coolant leak “at the back of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft” docked with the ISS, the American agency said.
“Crew members aboard the Space Station are safe and in no danger during the escape,” she added.
The spacewalk of Russians Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin had been canceled after one of the warning indicators went off in the Soyuz spacecraft, according to the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
“NASA and Roscosmos will continue to work together to determine the course of action, after the ongoing analysis” of the incident, added the American agency.
Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitri Peteline arrived in the ISS on September 21, accompanied by American astronaut Frank Rubio, via the Soyuz rocket launched from Kazakhstan.
This trip and this mission constitute one of the rare cooperations still in progress between Moscow and Washington since the beginning of the war in Ukraine triggered by the Russian invasion on February 24 and the Western sanctions that followed.
The International Space Station was launched in 1998 at a time of US-Russian cooperation, after the two countries competed in space (“Space Race”) during the Cold War years.