The second leak occurred in two months from a Russian spacecraft docking at the International Space Station (ISS). Flight controllers in Moscow noticed a “depressurization” aboard the Progress 82 robotic cargo ship, the Russian federal space agency Roscosmos reported on Saturday (February 11th). NASA officials reported that the pressure loss occurred in the cooling system of the Progress vehicle.

The reason for the loss of coolant in the spaceship “Progress 82” becomes clear. The hatches between Progress 82 and the station are open, and the temperature and pressure at the station are normal, NASA officials said in a blog post on Saturday. “The crew notified of the cooling loop leak are safe and continue normal space station operations.”

Progress 82 arrived at the ISS on October 28, 2022 and is scheduled to depart on February 17. It is not known whether the cargo ship will depart on that date or whether flight controllers will be held for longer than originally planned to continue the investigation into the leak. (Progressive vehicles are designed to burn in Earth’s atmosphere after their mission is complete, so engineers cannot test the vehicle on the ground.)

Incidentally, the depressurization was noticed the day another Russian cargo ship, Progress 83, arrived at the orbital lab. Progress 83 successfully docked early Saturday morning, unscathed by its sibling’s difficulties.

The Progress 82 leak follows a similar incident involving Russia’s MS-22 Soyuz spacecraft, which delivered three astronauts to the International Space Station in September and was supposed to return them home in March.

But on December 14, the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft leaked all its coolant, a dramatic event that Russian controllers eventually attributed to a visible micrometeorite impact. The vehicle is no longer suitable for carrying astronauts on the ISS except in an emergency, so Roscosmos plans to launch another Soyuz in its place later this month.

Known as the MS-23, this Soyuz interchange will launch without a crew. MS-22 will bring the crew – cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev and NASA’s Frank Rubio – back to Earth, possibly at the end of September. At least that’s the current plan. At this time, it is unclear whether Roscosmos and other partners of the space station will arrange this, possibly to allow more time to conduct an investigation into the Progress leak and evaluate the implications of their findings. Source