NASA Awards Contract to Maintain Webb Telescope Operations
NASA has selected Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation of Redondo Beach, California, to support the James Webb Space Telescope Phase E – Operations and Sustainment contract.
NASA and AST & Science, a subsidiary of AST SpaceMobile, Inc., have signed a joint agreement to formalize both parties’ strong interest in the sharing of information to maintain and improve space safety.
The European robotic arm controlled by cosmonaut Anna Kikina surveys the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship after the detection of a leak that cancelled Wednesday’s spacewalk. Credit: NASA TV
Ground teams at Mission Control in Moscow continue to assess a coolant leak detected from the aft end of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked to the International Space Station. As a result, the planned Dec.14 Roscosmos spacewalk was canceled to allow time to evaluate the fluid and potential impacts to the integrity of the Soyuz spacecraft.
NASA and Roscosmos will continue to work together to determine the next course of action following the ongoing analysis. The crew members aboard the space station are safe, and were not in any danger during the leak.
The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft carried NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin into space after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sept. 21.
Spacewalk Cancelled, Mission Controllers Evaluate Leak on Soyuz
Dec. 3, 2022: International Space Station Configuration. Six spaceships are parked at the space station including the Cygnus space freighter, the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft and Crew Dragon Endurance, and Russia’s Soyuz MS-22 crew ship and the Progress 81 and 82 resupply ships.
During preparations for this evening’s planned spacewalk by Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, ground teams noticed significant leaking of an unknown substance from the aft portion of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked to the Rassvet module on the International Space Station. The spacewalk has been canceled, and ground teams in Moscow are evaluating the nature of the fluid and potential impacts to the integrity of the Soyuz spacecraft, which carried Prokopyev, Petelin, and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio into space after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sept. 21.