(Reuters) – A planned routine spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station was called off on Wednesday after flight controllers noticed a stream of particles spewing from a docked Soyuz spacecraft, a NASA webcast showed.
A NASA commentator said the torrent of particles, which appeared to come from the rear section of the Soyuz MS-22 capsule, seemed to be liquid from the spacecraft, possibly coolant.
NASA said none of the International Space Station (ISS) crew was thought to be in any danger.
An official for Russia’s mission control operations near Moscow was heard telling the two cosmonauts in a radio transmission that their spacewalk was canceled while engineers worked to determine the nature and origin of the leak.
The NASA commentator on the livestream, Rob Navias, broadcasting from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, also said the spacewalk was called off because of the leak, which began about 8:30 p.m. EST (0130 GMT Thursday).
He said the Soyuz craft arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) in September, bringing the two cosmonauts who were suited up for a spacewalk as well as a NASA astronaut.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
