Commission space Corporation Roscosmos, who are investigating the incident with the depressurization of the Russian spacecraft “Soyuz”, presumably caused by the drilled hole in the inner casing of household compartment, is planning to conduct a spacewalk by Russian cosmonauts.
As Chairman of the Commission Nikolai Sevastyanov, the output of open space, which will be held on November 15, is planned, but will be appended to the task of inspection of the outer skin in the place where the crew of the ISS was discovered leaking oxygen.
“On 15 November, the planned release of our crew. This planned output to which we add this task”, — quotes Sevastyanova RIA “Novosti”.
The Director of the Roscosmos manned programs Sergey Krikalev, said that the operation will be carried out by Russian cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Sergey Prokopyeva. The task, as indicated by Krikalev will be in the opening screen-vacuum thermal insulation and micrometeorite protection of the “Soyuz MS-09”.
According to Krikalev, Russian cosmonauts will try to explore the hole outside the presence of the burrs (traces of drilling), as well as any sealant residue that hole could be plastered in the production.
“The aim is in the external inspection holes. You need to approach it as close as possible. What happens – let’s see,” — said Krikalev.
Krikalev pointed out that the planned operation time of the Russian cosmonauts will be about two hours.
At the moment Ovchinin and Prokopiev are on the Ground pre-flight preparation for this task. Krikalev added that the task of the Russian cosmonauts will be complicated by the fact that household compartment “Union”, where it was discovered the hole, not intended for conducting external works.
Nikolai Sevastyanov, in turn, added that the RSC “Energia”, which is also investigating the causes of the hole in the hull of the Union had not identified any systematic violations in the production of these devices. Commission for the investigation of the incident will meet once a week to discuss the latest data and work on research of the incident is planned to be completed by the end of November.
Recall that in the media earlier voiced different versions of the reasons of occurrence of holes in the Russian unit, ranging from manufacturing defect and ending with the suspicion of deliberate damage Russian spacecraft with American astronauts. The head of the Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin did not comment on rumours about the alleged involvement of the astronauts, calling to wait for the results of the official conclusions of the Commission for the investigation of the incident.
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Russian ISS astronauts will be in space for visual inspection the holes in the “Union”
Nikolai Khizhnyak