State commission to decide on Jan 11 what to do with damaged Soyuz MS-22

MOSCOW. Jan 9 (Interfax) - A state commission will decide on January 11 what ground specialists and the crew of the damaged Soyuz MS-22 spaceship, docked with the International Space Station (ISS), will do next, Roscosmos said on Sunday.

"The state commission will meet on January 11 and will proclaim its decision," Roscosmos said.

The corporation said on December 15, 2022, that Russian cosmonauts had cancelled a spacewalk from the ISS due to depressurization of the external radiator circuit in Soyuz MS-22. It said that the radiator, an element of the spaceship's thermal regulation system, had sustained mechanical damage from an external impact. A micrometeorite was blamed for the leak of coolant.

In turn, Joel Montalbano, ISS program manager in NASA, said that U.S. and Russian specialists had yet to establish the cause of coolant leak from the Soyuz MS-22 radiator.

Roscosmos head Yury Borisov said on December 19, 2022, that a preliminary examination of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft revealed a 0.8-millimeter hole in the coolant system that has led to the leakage.

The damage caused temperatures to soar to 40 degrees Celsius in the assist module and 30 degrees in the living quarters. Roscosmos said the temperature was not critical and there was no need for urgent evacuation of the cosmonauts.

Roscosmos said on December 27, 2022, that in January 2023 it would make "organizational decisions on the further actions to be taken by ground specialists and the crew of the Russian segment of the ISS, as well as on possible changes to the station's flight program."