NASA, Russian space agency evaluate need for space station rescue mission

Dec. 22 (UPI) -- NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos are evaluating if they will need to mount a rescue mission to the International Space Station after discovering a coolant leak from the Russian Soyuz spacecraft currently docked at the station.

The leaking spacecraft, designated Soyuz MS-22, carried U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio, along with cosmonauts Dmitri Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev to the International Space Station on Sept. 21.

"Last Wednesday evening ... we had detected a coolant leak on board the space station. The Russian cosmonauts were preparing for an EVA [spacewalk]. They had not exited the vehicle and so there was no contamination concerns," International Space Station program manager Joel Montalbano said during a teleconference with the media.

"Mission Control Center Moscow canceled that EVA and the team focused on better understanding the coolant leak.

"Since then, the Mission Control Center Houston and the Mission Control Center Moscow teams have been talking on a regular basis to understand what happened, the cause of what happened and the future steps."

Sergei Krikalev, the executive director for human space flight program at Roscosmos, dismissed speculation that the leak was caused by an impact from a Geminid meteor, saying the trajectory of the impact did not match the meteor shower.

"Now we are doing thermal analysis to see if we can use this vehicle to do normal re-entry ... or we need to send rescue vehicle to the station in future," Krikalev said.

If the Soyuz spacecraft proves to be unfit for re-entry, NASA and the Roscosmos will have to launch a new spacecraft to ensure the crew can safely return to Earth.

Russian officials have said that they will be ready to launch a new Soyuz in February if the need arises.