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Russian investigators who investigated the origin of a hole that caused an oxygen leak on the International Space Station claimed that this had been caused deliberately, said the chief of the International Space Station. space agency.
Dmitry Rogozin, director of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, presented his report to a first commission on Monday in a televised speech.
"He concluded that a manufacturing defect had been ruled out, which is important to establish the truth."
Rogozin said the main topic of the commission's investigation was that the hole had been drilled deliberately, a position that was expressed in the past.
"The place where this will have been done will be established by a second commission, which is now working," he said.
The small hole in the wall of a Russian-made Soyuz spacecraft moored at the ISS was located in August and quickly plugged.
Officials have suggested a number of possible reasons for the appearance of the hole.
A senior government official denied reports from the Russian media that the investigation had examined the possibility that American astronauts had drilled the hole in order to send a sick colleague back to Earth.
The current commander of the ISS, US astronaut Drew Feustel, described the crew as "embarrassing".
Rogozin, who previously held the post of deputy prime minister in the space industry, was named head of Roskosmos last May, in a move that analysts say would cause problems for the sector. crisis.
The official, who was subjected to US sanctions on the crisis in Ukraine in 2014, admitted that it had become difficult to work with NASA.
"Problems with NASA have certainly appeared, but not by NASA's fault," he said, accusing unnamed US officials of telling the US space agency what to do.
He also claimed that SpaceX's founder, Elon Musk, had tried to get Russia out of the launch services market in space and complained about the US military drone X-37.
"The Americans have this thing, the X-37," said Rogozin. "We do not understand its objectives, we understand rather, but we have not received an official explanation.
"Essentially, this thing can be used as a weapon carrier."
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