Temperature rising on Soyuz, crew not in danger

MOSCOW: The temperature in the Soyuz capsule docked with the International Space Station has risen but the crew was not in danger, the Russian space agency said on Friday. 

On Thursday, Russia’s space agency Roscosmos and the US space agency NASA said a coolant leak had been detected on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft. The leak forced the last-minute cancellation of a spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts on Wednesday.

Roscosmos said that a number of tests had been conducted on Soyuz on Friday, and the temperature in the capsule increased to 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit).

“This is a slight change in temperature,” the space agency said in a statement.

The development was for now “not critical” for the operation of the equipment and the comfort of the crew, Roscosmos said.

The coolant leak could potentially affect a return flight to Earth by three crew members.

Sergei Krikalev, a former cosmonaut who heads the crewed space flight programme for Roscosmos, said the leak may have been caused by a tiny meteorite striking Soyuz.

Space has been a rare avenue of cooperation between Moscow and Washington since the start of Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine in February and ensuing Western sanctions on Russia that shredded ties between the two countries.