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According to reports that the Russians are going to keep secret the cause of an air leak discovered at the International Space Station in 2018, NASA's administrator, Jim Bridenstine, has pledged to be safe. personally interview with the head of the Russian Space Agency.
"They did not say anything to me," Bridenstine said during a Houston energy conference question and answer session on Thursday, Sept. 19, according to the Houston Chronicle. But he stressed that he wished to maintain good relations with the Russians, one of the two main partners of the complex in orbit.
"I do not want to leave a set of objects [the relationship] back, but it is clearly not acceptable that there are holes in the International Space Station, "he said, evoking the 2-millimeter (0.08-inch) hole discovered by the Expedition crew 56 in the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft, a vehicle that was moored at the station.
Bridenstine's comments follow a report by the Russian international news agency RIA Novosti, in which Dmitry Rogozin, director of Roscosmos (the Russian Space Agency), suggested to his agency to find out what had happened. created the hole last year without revealing his identity. the results outside Roscosmos.
Related, connected, related: Hole causing a leak in a Russian spacecraft that can be attributed to mounting or testing
"What happened is clear to us, but we will not tell you anything," Rogozin said at a meeting with participants in a scientific conference, according to a computer-generated page of the report in Russian. from RIA Novosti, Wednesday 18 September. ).
After NASA reported a slow decline in cabin pressure at the station on August 29, 2018, the Shipping 56 crew located the cause of the air leak in the compartment Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft orbital, nearly three months after his arrival. at the International Space Station with three new crew members on board.
The astronauts plugged the hole with epoxy, gauze and strong tape. The Russians then launched an investigation. In the first weeks, Roscosmos director Dmitry Rogozin first hypothesized that a micrometeoroid could have punctured the hole and then suggested that the hole could have been drilled by a human, accidentally or deliberately.
The space station astronauts repaired a small hole in the upper orbital module of the Soyuz MS-09 space shuttle (left) on August 30, 2018.
(Image credit: NASA / Space.com)
NASA and Roscosmos, however, issued a joint statement in mid-September 2018 after the two agency heads spoke over the phone. The agencies "agreed to postpone any preliminary findings and provide explanations until the conclusion of the final investigation," Roscosmos and NASA said in their statement.
Roscosmos is currently the only agency able to recruit crewmembers in the space since the withdrawal of the space shuttle by NASA in 2011. NASA prepares Boeing and SpaceX US commercial vehicles for the first time. 39, commercial crew and plans to begin performing test flights with crew as early as this year. But for now, the Soyuz is the only way for astronauts to get to the International Space Station.
The two organizations are the main partners of the space station and have been collaborating since the early 1990s to build and maintain the 21-year-old orbiting complex. Bridenstine and other NASA officials have repeatedly emphasized the level of trust between their agency and Roscosmos, which includes several missions prior to ISS. NASA and the Soviet Union led a joint mission in 1975 called Apollo-Soyuz, and the new Russian nation associated with NASA for shuttle flights to the Mir space station between 1994 and 1998.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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