Roscosmos: Russian spacecraft leak caused by external impact

tech.hindustantimes.com:

A coolant leak from an uncrewed Russian supply ship docked at the International Space Station resulted from an external impact and not a manufacturing flaw, Russia's space corporation said Tuesday.

The leak from the Progress MS-21 cargo ship was spotted on Feb. 11 and followed a similar leak from a Soyuz crew capsule in December.

Russian space officials said that December's leak was caused by a tiny meteoroid that left a small hole in the exterior radiator and sent coolant spewing into space. But the new leak from another ship raised doubts about that theory, and Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos launched a probe into the incident to check whether it could have resulted from a manufacturing defect.

NASA said its specialists were assisting their Russian counterparts in the troubleshooting of the leak.

Following checks at Russian space factories and launch facilities and a close inspection of the cargo ship before it was dumped, Roscosmos concluded that the latest leak resulted from an “external impact” similar to the one that caused December's leak from the Soyuz crew capsule. On Tuesday. Roscosmos posted a close shot of the Progress MS-21 showing a 12-millimeter (0.5-inch) hole in its external radiator, which it said hadn't been spotted before.

After ruling out the manufacturing flaw, Roscosmos cleared the launch of a new Soyuz crew capsule that should replace the damaged one.

Russian Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio were supposed to ride the Soyuz they used to arrive at the station to return to Earth in March, but Russian space officials decided that higher temperatures resulting from the coolant leak could make it dangerous to use and it will return to Earth