As the U.S. and Russia are facing off over the invasion of Ukraine, the two adversary nations are quietly cooperating on another life-or-death matter: making sure astronauts are not stranded in space.
On Dec. 15, International Space Station mission control halted a planned spacewalk aboard the orbiting laboratory because of a startling new problem. A Russian Soyuz space capsule docked to the facility was suddenly spewing gobs of fluid into space. The dramatic leak, which saw a 0.8 millimeter hole empty the capsule’s radiator of cooling fluid, has left NASA and Russia’s Roscosmos space agency with a new problem — how to safely transport two cosmonauts and one astronaut who had been scheduled to return home in the now-damaged capsule in March. The capsule also functioned as the station’s emergency escape pod for those three, leaving them stranded if a serious problem develops in the station’s living quarters.
The situation — one of the more dangerous the ISS has faced in years — comes decades into the two nations’ long partnership running the station, which costs the U.S. $1.3 billion a year to operate. Yet despite the war in Ukraine dividing the two nations, the U.S. and Russia are working on solving the problem together, with a decision expected this month — reflecting three decades of interdependence at the ISS. Born of the end of the Cold War, the space station’s role as a geopolitical symbol of cooperation between the world’s most formidable nuclear powers has long outweighed its scientific achievements.
“Up to now, the White House explicitly has built a wall around ISS and space cooperation that kept it separate from the general pattern of U.S.-Russian relations,” said John Logsdon, a professor emeritus at George Washington University and founder of its Space Policy Institute. That was particularly true in the last decade, he added, when the U.S. relied solely on Russia to launch astronauts to the space station, until the first launch of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule in 2020.
“So there has been an explicit, but unstated and understood, policy that as long as Russia keeps up its part of the bargain in the partnership that we would not do anything influenced by external factors like Crimea or Ukraine.”
The busted Soyuz and potentially stranded spacefarers are just the latest episode in this long-running marriage of necessity.
“We have a crew member on this vehicle. And so, Roscosmos has reached out to us,” said NASA space station official Joel Montalbano in a December briefing for reporters. “The teams are going back and forth. We’re constantly exchanging data.”
“If we have some technical discussion among us or inside on the Russian side, then we share results of the discussion with our partners,” added Roscosmos’ Sergey Krikalev at the same briefing.
If the analysis, expected this month, concludes that a return trip on the damaged Soyuz would endanger the returnees, astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Dmitri Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev, Russia might have to send up an empty Soyuz capsule to bring them home instead sometime in February. NASA has also reached out to SpaceX about returning the astronauts home in a Dragon space capsule, which normally carries four astronauts but has the capacity for seven in an emergency.
“In space, you cooperate and come to each other’s aid, just like Antarctica or Mount Everest, even if on the ground you are practically at war,” said space journalist Keith Cowing of NASA Watch. “This is like a rescue at sea.”
Just like a car with a busted radiator, the Soyuz capsule will overheat with a radiator emptied of cooling fluid. The capsule now relies on air from the station for cooling, but closing its hatch saw temperatures inside rise to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s even before sending it home to Earth on a reentry burn through the atmosphere, when temperatures inside would normally rise even with a functioning cooling system.
Most likely, the Russians will conclude they have to send an empty Soyuz capsule ahead of the March return mission to carry Rubio, Petelin and Prokopyev home, said Cowing. “In some ways, the Russians are even more conservative than we are, so that wouldn’t surprise me.” That will require rescheduling launches, experiments, crew rosters, spacewalks, maintenance and a host of other decisions aboard the orbiting lab, doubtless taking up a lot of planning time at the space agencies, he added. “It is a tribute to space cooperation that they can plan this, with everything else going on. Kind of a lesson for us on Earth.”
Orbital debris
A meteor shower passed by the space station on the day of the leak. However, its direction did not match the orientation of the hole in the Soyuz, said Krikalev, making it still a bit uncertain whether the leak’s cause was a space impact or a mechanical problem. Later camera work showed an exterior hole in the Soyuz about 4 millimeters across above the smaller hole in the radiator line. A micrometeorite that made such a hole would be too small to track and offer station managers warning it was coming, he added.
Traveling at 15,000 mile-per-hour “hypervelocity” orbital speeds, even a paint chip can blast holes in space station walls. More than 27,000 pieces of space junk, just the stuff big enough to be tracked by the Defense Department’s global Space Surveillance Network, litters the sky around Earth.
“Here’s the thing: The amount of stuff we launch is greater than the stuff that is reentering and burning up. So that means the amount of space traffic and space debris is increasing,” said astrodynamicist Moriba Jah of the University of Texas at Austin. “I’m amazed how infrequently we see these sort of things happening. I’d expect to see them.” Given increases in space debris in recent years, an impact from a tiny piece of space junk, (“something half the size of a bullet going 15 times faster than a bullet,” said Jah) wouldn’t be a surprising explanation for the Soyuz leak.
“We have to look at how well that system was shielded and how it was mitigated,” said Jah. “Humans just can’t think of everything that goes into one of these ‘random’ events ahead of time.”
Although the spew of fluid into space was impressive, Montalbano doubted whether the drops would cause problems for the structure of the space station. “It boils off very quickly. And so, we’re not concerned with any contaminants left on board,” he said.
In the 1990s, Soviet radar reconnaissance satellites leaked hundreds of inch-wide cooling liquid droplets some 370 to 620 miles above Earth — and the space station’s orbit. Whether the newer droplets from the Soyuz will coalesce to form a similar cloud of orbital debris to harry other satellites or the station is a “tricky problem,” said micrometeorite impact expert William Schonberg of the Missouri University of Science and Technology.
Most likely, the liquid will evaporate in orbit, said Schonberg, but without somehow running an experimental recreation of the event, “it’s going to be difficult to say whether or not any, some or most of the leaking coolant will remain in orbit and negatively affect those who encounter it next.”
The International Space Station has weathered hundreds of micrometeor strikes in more than two decades of operations, including ones on windows and solar panels. Heat-dissipating radiators on the station are hardened against such strikes with fluid lines buried under shielding. The leading face of the station is at particular risk for micrometeorite impacts as it circles the Earth once every 90 minutes, traveling at 5 miles per second.
Marriage of necessity
The Soyuz leak comes amid heightened concerns about orbital debris tied to Russia conducting an antisatellite missile test last year, blowing up one of their own derelict spy satellites. The blast, called “reckless and dangerous” by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, left at least 1,500 trackable fragments in orbit.
“If the coolant leak turns out to have come from the debris created by that Russian antisatellite test, it wouldn’t surprise me,” said Jah. “Mother Nature is going to show us the unintended consequences of our actions. That could be the real point of this event.”
Even earlier in 2018, a drill hole in a Soyuz aboard the space station, apparently made before its launch, raised tensions between the U.S. and Russia. A Russian space official claimed an astronaut had made the hole in a bid to return home early, a claim dismissed by NASA officials. The hole was filled with epoxy.
Such increasing tensions, with repeated Russian claims of backing out of the station, have withered away any official interest in a continued space partnership, even without the war in Ukraine. NASA has committed to continue operating the space station through 2030. Built of a combination of U.S., Russian and international parts, the orbiting lab has quietly set endurance records for human life in space and set a medical baseline for future moon or Mars explorers.
“It was back in the 1990s, a marriage of necessity,” said Logsdon. Russia needed the space station partnership to sustain its human space program at the end of the Cold War. NASA meanwhile needed the Russian buy-in to make geopolitics a selling point for the orbiting lab. “But it was a multi-decade undertaking, so you have to live with the consequences of past decisions,” said Logsdon. “I don’t think there is a chance of a follow-on intimate partnership along these lines now.”
Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
