Apparent leak from docked Soyuz spacecraft cancels Russian ISS spacewalk

Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) had to call off a routine spacewalk after flight controllers noticed a stream of particles spewing from a docked Soyuz spacecraft, a NASA webcast showed. A torrent of snowflake-like particles could be seen spraying from the rear section of the Soyuz MS-22 capsule in NASA's live video feed. A liquid seems to be escaping from the spacecraft, possibly coolant, a NASA commentator said.

NASA clarified that none of the seven members of the current International Space Station (ISS) crew are thought to be in danger. The current crew includes three Russian cosmonauts, three US NASA astronauts and a Japanese astronaut.

The issue occurred right when crew commander Sergey Prokopyev and flight engineer Dimitri Petelin suited up for the spacewalk to move a radiator from one module to another on the Russian segment of the ISS. A Russian mission control operations official near Moscow could be heard telling Prokopyev and Petelin in a radio transmission that their spacewalk was being cancelled. Engineers were working to determine the nature and origin of the leak.

Rob Navias, the NASA commentator on the livestream broadcasting from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, also said the spacewalk was called off because of the leak.

Prokopyev, Petelin and US astronaut Frank Rubio had arrived at the ISS in the Soyuz craft in September. The spacecraft is attached to the Earth-facing side of the orbital laboratory outpost.

Wednesday's spacewalk had been postponed once before in November because of faulty cooling pumps in the cosmonauts' spacesuits, Navias said.

It would have been this year's 12th spacewalk at the ISS and the 257th in the history of the 20-year-old platform. Spacewalks are typically done for space station assembly, maintenance and upgrades, according to NASA.

Navias said it is hard to what would be the implications of the apparent leak on future safety and operation of that spacecraft.

(With inputs from agencies)

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