A Russian astronaut and his colleague venturing outside the International Space Station (ISS) on a spacewalk had a seemingly narrow escape being told to flee after finding a ‘blob’ in space.
No, it wasn’t extraterrestrial ectoplasm, but coolant leaking from a radiator.
However, that apparent normalcy didn’t render the out-of-this-world experience any less perilous for the cosmonauts.
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The ISS blob
Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub were ordered to leave the area immediately when the incident occurred on October 25, 2023.
Kononenko’s tether became contaminated after the astronaut duo got close to a coolant leak.
As a result, the tether was bagged and left outside ISS when the spacewalk ended.
The leak had first been observed emanating from an external radiator earlier that month.
The plan had been to isolate and photograph the radiator, which serves as a backup to a main body radiator that regulates the temperature inside Russia’s Nauka multipurpose laboratory module.
Kononenko and Chub configured several valves, isolating the external radiator from its ammonia supply.
Kononenko said he had seen small holes on the surface of the radiator before noticing the blob.
“The holes have very even edges, like they’ve been drilled through,” Kononenko radioed to the flight controllers working in Moscow Mission Control.
“There are lots of them. They are spread in a chaotic manner.”
The blob was said to have been formed by pooling residual coolant that the astronaut disturbed as he closed the valves.
The cosmonauts had brought tissues and cloths to wipe down their spacesuits and tools in an attempt not to bring the substance back aboard ISS.
Russian engineers will use the data collected to further the cause of the leak and hopefully return the radiator to working order.
Other astronaut news
In other news from the Great Beyond, an astronaut aiming to walk on Mars has revealed the biggest challenge.
The good news is that astronauts age slower while they’re in space – which explains why 60-year-old Kononenko is still going strong.
However, this NASA astronaut recently revealed that being in space made him realize we are ‘living a lie’.
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