Russian cosmonauts spend nearly eight hours cutting their spaceship

On Tuesday, for nearly eight hours, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergei Prokopyev made an unprecedented outing to space outside the International Space Station.

The two Russians crossed the station for about three hours. , installing a workstation from which they could stabilize and turn into a Soyuz spacecraft attached to the station. Then, with an badortment of tools including a knife and a pair of scissors, they tore a wide strip of insulation protecting the orbital module of the Space Shuttle.

The procedure as a whole was absolutely fascinating, because it is not every day that we see a person in the space cut several centimeters of insulation with a knife. While the cosmonauts were in turn working on the insulation, fragments of Mylar and other jagged materials were moving away from the site like a dirty snowstorm. (Since the station is at a relatively low altitude, these low-mbad, high-drag materials should be carried into the Earth's atmosphere and burned, which does not pose a threat to spaceflight activities).

Kononenko and Prokopyev worked on isolation for a few hours, more and more exasperated. A Russian translator, speaking at NASA TV, shared discordant remarks between the two cosmonauts and the control of the Roscosmos mission just north of Moscow. "Be careful, my hand is there," said the translator. And, "Be careful not to cut the cable." Time and time again, the mission leaders urged the hard-charging cosmonauts to take a break. It was scary to see the cosmonauts wield the knife in a seemingly casual way, so close to their pressurized space suit.

Find the hole

Finally, the crew members cut out the insulator in a thin anti-debris shield, and, after removing this, they arrived at the hull of the Soyuz vehicle himself. They were looking for the outside site of a leak in the Soyuz probe detected on August 30, about two months after the vehicle had brought three crew members to the station. Using multiple layers of epoxy resin, astronauts inside the space station have repaired the slow leak – a small hole a few millimeters in diameter – a day after its detection. They were never in serious danger, but the mystery of the cause of the flight gave rise to considerable intrigue.

Using a small pair of scissors, extremely delicate process with the awkward gloves of his space suit, Kononenko tried to taste the outside. of the leak site clearly visible in a live television video. Presumably, taking high definition images and a GoPro video from outside the leak site and collecting samples of resin or other materials will help the Russians to determine the cause of the hole at the origin .

This problem is complex for NASA. and the Russian Space Agency. Although Roscosmos leader Dmitry Rogozin was quite a diplomat on the world stage about the leak, rumors have been hinting that a NASA astronaut may have pierced the Soyuz in the area. space, because he wanted to go home earlier. is clearly absurd, and the much more likely story is that an accident occurred in a Russian production plant, a technician finding the drilling error and covering the hole with glue. This would have prevented the problem from being detected during a vacuum test. However, this temporary fix might have failed a few months later after prolonged exposure in space.

On Wednesday, Rogozin thanked the cosmonauts for their hard work and finally succeeded. "I want to congratulate you on the success of the mission," he said. "The exit to space itself, I would say, was unprecedented in terms of complexity and risk, and you did it with resounding success."

Samples collected, said Rogozin, were "extremely important to carry out all the investigation procedures and to determine the causes of the damage to the space shuttle". They will soon be badyzed by engineers on Earth.

This could happen next week, when this Soyuz machine will leave the station under Prokopyev's command. It will also transport German astronaut Alexander Gerst with Chancellor Serena Auñón of NASA. On Wednesday, the Soyuz will move away from the station and perform a desorbital burn that will last about 4 minutes and 30 seconds, thus slowing the trajectory of the spacecraft and throwing it into the earth 's atmosphere.

The orbital module (where the leak and the descent module will then be pyrotechnically separated from the descent module, which will transform its heat shield into a terrestrial atmosphere and bring the crew and their samples back to Earth.

Listing image by NASA