Russian cosmonauts take sample of mystery hole in Soyuz capsule docked at international space station
- The capsule leak caused a flap between the US and Russian space agencies, following its discovery at the end of August.
- The spacewalk lasted almost eight hours
Using knives and shears, a pair of Russian spacewalkers cut samples of material around a mysterious hole in a Soyuz spacecraft docked on the International Space Station that a Moscow official suggested could have been deliberate sabotage.
Roscosmos space agency said the aim was to discover whether the “small but dangerous” hole had been made on Earth or in space.
“That is exactly the hole we’ve been looking for, guys,” radioed Russian Mission Control outside Moscow.
The 2mm cavity on the Soyuz spaceship docked at the ISS caused an air leak detected in August, two months after the craft’s last voyage.
Until Tuesday, astronauts had only been able to examine the hole from inside the spacecraft.
During the an almost eight-hour spacewalk, veteran cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergei Prokopyev struggled, but eventually succeeded, in cutting away the insulation covering the hole and taking out a sample to analyse.