The Commission of experts of state Corporation “Roscosmos” has still not established the cause of the holes in the spacecraft “Soyuz MS-09”, discovered by the crew of the International space station on 30 August 2018. Recall that at the time had installed an air leak in one of the ISS modules. Inspection of the entire plant allowed to identify the presence in the Russian spacecraft a hole created due to some external mechanical impact is likely to drill (the first assumption). The hole itself was discovered by the German astronaut Alexander Gerst.
Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergei Prokopiev December 11 released into space to take samples of materials from the surface of the orbital module of a Soyuz. The work took more than seven hours. The astronauts had a knife and snips to cut open the hull of a ship. Later, when the change of the ISS, the samples were brought to Earth on the same ship, and was then submitted for analysis to the investigators.
According to the latest data, the state Corporation “Roscosmos” has not yet been applied to the competent authorities for initiating criminal cases in connection with the creation of the hole from the drill in the living compartment of the spacecraft “Soyuz MS-09”, told reporters the General Director of “Rosatom” Dmitry Rogozin. According to the head of the Corporation, for any very little evidence.
“For final conclusions on the evidence, even those that were collected at the exit of astronauts in outer space. You may need additional experiments in orbit” — quoted Rogozin “Interfax”.
As it appeared the hole in the Russian module of mystery. Among the versions appearing on the ship “Union” was nominated manufacturing defects, intentional damage to the plating American astronaut, a collision with micrometeoroid and space debris (the latter is unlikely because the appearance of the hole indicates that it was done from the inside).
Internal Commission RSC Energia (the company, which produces the ships “the Union”) were unable to establish the cause in the processing chain on the Ground, so in mid-September, Russia’s Roscosmos has formed a special Commission.
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