It will take some time before backup comes for the space station crew.
A Russian space official said during a press conference Thursday that a backup Soyuz will have to wait until February to reach the International Space Station.
The next crew was supposed to fly in the middle of March, according to Sergei Krikalev, the head of the training center.
If the crew is stranded, the new Soyuz on the ground could be used to retrieve them. Krikalev said that it can only be delivered a little earlier.
The International Space Station is pictured.
The cause of the hole that caused the leak is still being investigated, but one idea has been ruled out, as the trajectory was in the wrong direction.
The Canadarm2 robotic arm was worked on by NASA on Sunday. The survey found a small hole in the vehicle that is likely to be the cause of the leak.
Montalbano said that there was some work that needed to be done to better understand if it was a meteorite or a hardware issue. Krikalev said that a piece of space junk is too small to be tracked from the ground.
The damaged space station would be empty if Russia fast-tracks the next Soyuz. Montalbano said that the data would be used for future evaluations.
The co-author of Why Am I Taller is Elizabeth Howell. A book about space medicine is in the works. Follow us on social media, like us on Facebook (opens in new tab)
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