​One of the strangest events aboard the International Space Station occurred in August 2018, when the pressure inside the station suddenly began to drop. Fortunately, the cause was quickly found: a hole with a diameter of 2 mm in the wall of the Soyuz MS-09 capsule docked to the space station. The hole was discovered by European astronaut Alexander Hearst, who first covered it with his finger to stop air escaping from the station until a better and more convenient solution was found for Hearst.

Even today, the mystery is not solved: we do not know who caused the hole, whether it happened on Earth or in space. According to some rumors, this is the fault of the American astronaut Serena Aunon-Chancellor, who after a nervous breakdown wanted to speed up her return to Earth.

NASA strongly denies these rumors, but Serena Aunon-Chancellor has almost completely disappeared from the public space since returning to Earth. I find it hard to believe that there is no video from aboard the ISS of the moments leading up to the depressurization, but if there is, it has not been released, so the incident remains shrouded in mystery and rumor.

Just two months later, Alexei Ovchinin and Nick Haig were in the Soyuz MS-10 capsule on the launch pad at Baikonur, preparing to launch into orbit on a seemingly routine flight. During the launch, one of the boosters of the Soyuz-FG rocket hit the central body of the rocket immediately after liftoff, which caused the rocket to disintegrate instantly.

Fortunately, the launch termination system did its job and the pod they were in was quickly extracted from the wreckage of the rocket. Instead of going into space, they returned to Earth, 400 km from the launch pad, thankfully safe and unharmed. This was the second time in history that the launch termination system was used and the first time it was activated after the rocket had separated from the launch pad.

On July 21, 2021, after 14 years of delays, the Nauka module was finally launched by a Proton-M rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and prepared to meet the International Space Station for docking. However, immediately after the launch, the Moscow control center lost the telemetry of the module, and after the communication was restored, problems with its propulsion system were detected.

Finally, with the help of an auxiliary propulsion unit, “Nauka” reached the outskirts of the ISS, and on July 29, the module was connected to the space station. Just a few hours later, as the crew prepared to open the hatch between the Science and the Star module, the engines attached to the Science unexpectedly activated and could not be shut down until all the fuel on board had been consumed.

This caused the International Space Station to spin unexpectedly around its center of mass, an unplanned and risky maneuver that had no unintended consequences other than a severe scare for the crew and those observing the station on the ground.

On December 15, 2022, when cosmonauts Serhii Prokopiev and Dmytro Petelin were preparing for extravehicular activity, cameras monitoring the outer space of the space station recorded splashes of liquid from the Soyuz MS-22 capsule docked to the Rassvet module of the ISS. . Extravehicular measures were immediately canceled to investigate the damage to the Soyuz MS-22 capsule: it had lost all its coolant.

As a result, the use of the capsule to safely return astronauts to Earth was called into question, so the decision was made to launch the next unmanned Soyuz capsule in place of the damaged capsule. As for the cause, the Roscosmos commission concluded that the loss of coolant was caused by an unfortunate collision with a micrometeorite (although neither NASA nor Roscosmos have released images of the alleged collision site).

I almost believed the meteorite hypothesis, but yesterday, February 10, the Progress MS-21 cargo ship, which docked with the Russian Poisk module of the ISS, also suffered a complete loss of coolant. The event happened a few hours after the docking of the new Russian cargo ship “Progress MS-22”. Progress MS-21 was supposed to detach from the ISS on February 18 to make way for the future Soyuz MS-23 capsule. I find it impossible to believe that two meteoroids hit two Russian ships in the same place, the ships docked to different modules of the station.

This time we have no images, only official releases from NASA and Roscosmos, and it looks like the Union MS-23 launch, scheduled for February 20, will not be delayed. As the Progress MS-21 incident continues, it will probably be a few more days before we have a clearer picture of the situation, but one thing is certain: we are living in a time when life aboard the International Space Station is completely not boring

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