Russia is examining the flight worthiness of a crew capsule docked with the International Space Station that sprang a leak last week and may need to send up a rescue vessel.
There were dramatic NASA TV images of white particles streaming out of the rear of the vehicle as it began spraying its coolant into space.
Sergei Krikalev, who leads human spaceflight programs at Russia's Roscosmos, told reporters that the damage was being assessed.
If a thermal analysis shows thatMS-22 isn't suitable for crewed flight, then a scheduled launch of another Soyuz capsule in March from Baikonur could be moved up.
NASA's International Space Station program manager, who was also on the call, said that the next vehicle would be sent up in February.
The spaceship would return to Earth with no crew.
Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev were among the people who were flown to the International Space Station.
The International Space Station has just one "lifeboat" that can carry four people, in case it needs to be evacuated, ifMS-22 were to be deemed fit.
A group of people arrived on a Crew Dragon in October.
Montalbano said the cause of the damage wasn't clear. Since the hull was penetrated from a different direction, it doesn't seem like the annual Geminid meteor shower was to blame.
The trajectory team in Houston and the trajectory team in Moscow confirmed that it was not from the shower.
There is still a lot of work to be done to determine if it was caused by naturally occurring micrometeoroids, man-made debris in space or a hardware failure.
The spacewalk was to upgrade the station's solar array.
Since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine and the subsequent Western sanctions on Russia, space has been a rare place of cooperation.
The space station was launched in 1998 at a time of increased cooperation between the US and Russia.
Agence France- Presse.
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