Roscosmos reports skin damage to Soyuz MS-22 spaceship latched on to ISS

MOSCOW. Dec 15 (Interfax) - The skin of the assist module of the Soyuz MS-22 manned spaceship was damaged on Thursday, and a visual examination confirmed the leak, the Roscosmos press service said in a statement.

"There is preliminary information that the skin of the Soyuz MS-22 manned spaceship's assist module was damaged on Thursday, December 15," the press service said.

"A visual examination confirmed the leak, and it was decided to stop the scheduled extravehicular activity of Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, crewmembers of the Russian segment of the International Space Station," it said.

Currently, all systems of the International Space Ship and the spacecraft are working normally, and the crew is safe, Roscosmos said.

Russian specialists are studying images of Soyuz MS-22 where a coolant leak occurred, it said.

"For the purpose of establishing the cause of the event, Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina used a camera on an arm of the multipurpose laboratory module to take pictures and make a video of the ship's exterior," Roscosmos said.

The images were transmitted to Earth and Russian specialists are studying them.

"Once the situation is analyzed, a decision on the further course of action by ground specialists and crewmembers of the ISS' Russian segment will be made," Roscosmos said.

Roscosmos said earlier on Thursday that Russian cosmonauts had cancelled a spacewalk for technical reasons.

Cosmonauts Prokopyev and Petelin were due to go on a spacewalk on Thursday and use the European ERA robotic arm for the first time.

This is the second subsequent delay of extravehicular activity by the Russian cosmonauts. The cosmonauts were unable to do the work on November 25 due to a malfunction of spacesuit cooling system pumps.