Russia’s space agency said crew members on the International Space Station were inspecting a Russian capsule that may have suffered damage from a meteoroid strike.
The inspection, which occurred on December 18, came several days after a leak on the Russian Soyuz capsule was reported. Dramatic video footage showed what engineers said was ammonia spraying into space near the orbiting station.
Experts later said they were monitoring the capsule, and the wider station, for possible drops in temperatures.
Russia's space agency, Roskosmos, said in a statement that the station’s seven-member crew, which includes Russians and Americans, were using a camera on a Canadian-built robotic arm to examine the Soyuz MS-22 capsule.
Both the Russian agency and its U.S. counterpart, NASA, said the problem did not appear to pose any danger to the crew. But the leak did cause officials to scrub a planned spacewalk by Russian cosmonauts.
The Russian agency said one option under consideration is to speed up the launch of another Soyuz capsule. The next Soyuz is scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in March, but officials could send it up sooner without a crew. That would allow some of the crew now on the space station to return home.
A Russian space official said last week a micrometeoroid could have caused the leak.
Sergei Krikalev, a veteran cosmonaut and director of Roskosmos' manned space flight programs, said the leak could affect the performance of the coolant system and the temperature in the equipment section of the capsule.
The RIA-Novosti news agency said the capsule's temperature had risen but that ground controllers were able to reduce it to normal levels.
Despite tensions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow and Washington have continued to partner on space exploration and maintenance of the aging orbiting space station.
NASA is less reliant on Russian space craft to send crews and equipment up to the station now that the private company SpaceX has begun flying regular missions.