Russia is considering sending an empty spaceship to the International Space Station to bring home three crew members who were stranded after their capsule sprung a leak.
At a news conference on Thursday, officials from the two agencies said they were continuing to investigate the cause of the small puncture on the capsule's external cooling line.
The vehicle, known asMS-22, began spraying its coolant into space on December 14, with dramatic images of white particles streaming out of the rear.
Sergei Krikalev said the damage was being assessed.
A meteorite is suspected of hitting after a leak from a capsule.
No decision has been made about how to get the crew members out of the capsule, either by launching another Soyuz or sending them home in a leaking capsule.
If a thermal analysis concludes thatMS-22 is not suitable for crewed flight, then a scheduled launch of another Soyuz capsule in March from Baikonur could be moved up.
The next Soyuz vehicle is expected to be sent up in February, according to the programme manager of the International Space Station.
The spaceship would return to Earth with no crew.
The first leak on the Soyuz was not this one. The module may have been sabotaged after springing an air leak last year. The leak was sealed with tape after a small loss of pressure that was not life threatening.
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 deemed fit.
A group of people arrived on a Crew Dragon in October.
Montalbano said the cause of the damage wasn't clear. The hull was penetrated from a different direction, so it didn't appear as though it was the cause of the incident.
Montalbano said that the trajectory team in Houston and the trajectory team in Moscow confirmed that it wasn't from the shower.
He said more work was needed to determine if it was caused by naturally occurring micrometeoroids or a hardware failure.
The ROScosmos chief, Yury Borisov, maintained that there were no fears for the safety of the crew in the live broadcast.
The temperature on the spaceship has not gone above 30C in the last few weeks. He said that they have no fears about the life of the crew on the International Space Station. The temperature has been stable since we brought in air ducts from the Russian section.
On Thursday, a spacewalk was held to upgrade the station's solar array.
The report was contributed by Agence France- Presse.
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