MOSCOW — A coolant leak from an uncrewed Russian provide ship docked on the Worldwide House Station resulted from an exterior affect and never a producing flaw, Russia’s area company mentioned Tuesday.

The leak from the Progress MS-21 cargo ship was noticed on Feb. 2 and adopted an identical leak from a Soyuz crew capsule in December.

Russian area officers mentioned the sooner leak was brought on by a tiny meteoroid that left a small gap within the exterior radiator and despatched coolant spewing into area. However the brand new leak from one other ship raised doubts about that idea, and Russia’s state area company Roscosmos launched a probe into the incident to verify whether or not it might have resulted from a producing defect.

NASA mentioned its specialists have been helping their Russian counterparts within the troubleshooting of the leak.

Following checks at Russian area factories and launch services and an in depth inspection of the cargo ship earlier than it was dumped, Roscosmos concluded that the leak resulted from an “exterior affect” much like the one which brought on December’s leak from the Soyuz crew capsule. On Tuesday. Roscosmos posted an in depth shot of the Progress MS-21 displaying a 12-millimeter (0.5-inch) gap in its exterior radiator, which it mentioned hadn’t been noticed earlier than.

After ruling out the manufacturing flaw, Roscosmos cleared the launch of a brand new Soyuz crew capsule that ought to exchange the broken one.

Russian Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio have been purported to trip the Soyuz they used to reach on the station to return to Earth in March, however Russian area officers determined that greater temperatures ensuing from the coolant leak might make it harmful to make use of. Roscosmos introduced that the brand new Soyuz MS-23 capsule to exchange it will likely be launched in computerized mode on Friday and dock on the station on Sunday.

Since it’ll journey in uncrewed mode to expedite the launch, a alternative crew will now have to attend till one other Soyuz capsule is prepared, which means that Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio must keep on the station till September, pushing their mission to shut to a yr.

NASA has mentioned it took half in all of the discussions and agreed with the plan.

Moreover Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio, the area station is dwelling to NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada; Russian Anna Kikina; and Japan’s Koichi Wakata. The 4 rode up on a SpaceX capsule final October.

Roscosmos additionally introduced Tuesday that Russia will prolong its participation within the Worldwide House Station till 2028, reversing an earlier assertion that mentioned it might choose out of the undertaking earlier.