Engineers Assessing Soyuz Spacecraft Leak – Spacewalk Cancelled

The European robotic arm controlled by cosmonaut Anna Kikina surveys the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship after the detection of a leak that canceled Wednesday’s spacewalk. Credit: NASA TV

During preparations for yesterday’s planned spacewalk by Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, ground teams noticed significant leaking of an unknown substance from the aft portion of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked to the Rassvet module on the International Space Station (ISS). The spacewalk was canceled, and ground teams in Moscow began evaluating the nature of the fluid and its potential impacts on the integrity of the Soyuz spacecraft.

International Space Station Configuration on December 3, 2022. Six spaceships are parked at the space station including the Cygnus space freighter, the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft and Crew Dragon Endurance, and Russia’s Soyuz MS-22 crew ship and the Progress 81 and 82 resupply ships. Credit: NASA

The leak has since been determined to be coolant, and ground teams at Mission Control in Moscow continue to assess the leak from the aft end of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft.

Following the ongoing analysis, NASA and Roscosmos will continue to work together to determine the next course of action. The crew members aboard the space station are safe and were not in any danger during the leak.

The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft transported NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin into space after launching on September 21 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.