spacetoday.net: Russian cosmonauts perform arduous spacewalk to inspect Soyuz

Posted: Sun, Dec 16, 2018, 12:36 PM ET (1736 GMT)
ISS EVA 2018 December 11 (NASA)

Russian cosmonauts identified the site of a leak on a Soyuz spacecraft during a long and, at times, dramatic spacewalk Tuesday. Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Prokopyev spent 7 hours and 45 minutes outside the station, spending the first few hours moving over to the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft. Cosmonauts then cut through the insulation surrounding part of the spacecraft's orbital module, including using a knife that scattered flakes of the material all around them. They did find the site of the hole, which caused an air leak briefly in August until cosmonauts patched it with epoxy. The spacewalkers collected materials for analysis back on Earth before wrapping up the EVA. The Soyuz spacecraft will depart the station Dec. 20 to return three crew members to Earth, but the orbital module where the hole is located will be jettisoned before re-entry.