ISS Coolant Leak Forces NASA To Abandon Spacewalk, What Happens Next

NASA engineers and flight control teams are reviewing data and video associated with a coolant leak that postponed two US spacewalks initially scheduled for today and October 20, 2023. The leak is from a backup radiator on the International Space Station's Nauka multipurpose laboratory module (MLM).

The space agency confirmed the leak has ceased via Roscosmos flight controllers and evidence by NASA external station camera views, which show MLM only having residual coolant droplets. The primary radiator on Nakua is said to be operating normally and is providing complete cooling to the module with no impacts on the crew or ISS operations.

The radiator in question was first delivered to the ISS on the Rassvet module during space shuttle mission STS-132 in 2010. It was later transferred to the Nakua during a Roscomos spacewalk. Teams on the ground continue investigating the cause of the leak, and will provide additional updates as soon as they can.

While the spacewalks may have been postponed, life on the space station for the astronauts continued as usual. All seven space station inhabitants started their day by weighing themselves in microgravity. To do that, the crew utilizes a special device that applies a known force to a crew member and then measures acceleration to calculate their mass accurately.

Two cosmonauts, Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, began preparing for their spacewalk scheduled for the month's end. The cosmonauts plan to install new hardware and deploy nanosatellites.

Astronauts Loral O'Hara, Andrea Mogensen, and Satoshi Furukawa spent part of their day transferring cargo in and out of the Cygnus space freighter. O'Hara and Mogensen of the European Space Agency plan to exit the space station once the all-clear is given to swab station surfaces to determine the types of microbes that might survive the extreme conditions of outer space.

Cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov is working on life support and electronics maintenance. He also finalized a session of carbon monoxide monitoring and readied radiation detectors that the astronauts will wear during upcoming spacewalks.

Currently, there are no new dates for the postponed spacewalks.