MOSCOW: Russian cosmonauts began a spacewalk Tuesday to examine a mystery hole in a Soyuz spacecraft docked on the International Space Station that a Moscow official suggested could have been deliberate sabotage.
Roscosmos space agency said the aim would be to discover whether the “small but dangerous” hole had been made on Earth or in space.
The two-millimeter cavity on the Soyuz spaceship docked at the ISS caused an air leak detected in August, two months after the craft’s last voyage.
So far astronauts have only been able to examine the hole from inside the spacecraft.
Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said in October that an investigation had ruled out a manufacturing error. He had said earlier that Russia did not exclude “deliberate interference in space.”
Russian media reported the investigation was probing the possibility US astronauts deliberately drilled the hole in order to get a sick colleague sent back home.
Russian officials later denied those reports.
The discovery of the hole was followed in October by the failure of a manned Soyuz launch, although the Russian and US astronauts returned safely to Earth.
Tuesday’s spacewalk began at 1559 GMT and was set to last more than six hours.
Veteran cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergei Prokopyev left the ISS and Prokopyev operated a boom to move Kononenko safely from the ISS to work on the Soyuz spacecraft.
Once in position Kononenko was to use a knife to rip open the insulation and the debris shield protecting the spacecraft to look at the hole and scrape off samples
The samples will then be sent to Earth to “get at the truth” of the cavity’s origins, the space agency said.
The cosmonaut was also to take photographs and film video, before putting new insulation over the area.
“It’s a challenge. Sergei and I are accepting it,” Kononenko said ahead of the spacewalk, which is his fourth and the second for Prokopyev.
Rogozin called the spacewalk “unprecedented in its complexity” on Twitter and Roscosmos said it would “enter the history of space exploration.”
What makes it especially hard is that the Soyuz spacecraft, unlike the ISS, was not designed to be repaired in spacewalks and has no outside railings for astronauts to hold onto.
“There’s nothing, that’s the problem,” Kononenko said.
The Soyuz spacecraft is used to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS. The hole is in a section that will not be used for the return journey to Earth on December 20.
The ISS is one of the few areas of Russia-US cooperation that remains unaffected by the slump in relations and Washington’s sanctions.
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The Aquila II is a Panamanian-flagged tanker under US sanctions related to the shipment of illicit Russian oil. Owned by a company with a listed address in Hong Kong, ship tracking data shows it has spent much of the last year with its radio transponder turned off, a practice known as “running dark” commonly employed by smugglers to hide their location.
US Southern Command, which oversees Latin America, said in an email that it had nothing to add to the Pentagon’s post on X. The post said the military “conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction” on the ship.
“The Aquila II was operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean,” the Pentagon said. “It ran, and we followed.”
The US did not say it had seized the ship, which the US has done previously with at least seven other sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela.
A Navy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations, would not say what forces were used in the operation but confirmed the destroyers USS Pinckney and USS John Finn as well as the mobile base ship USS Miguel Keith were operating in the Indian Ocean.
In videos the Pentagon posted to social media, uniformed forces can be seen boarding a Navy helicopter that takes off from a ship that matches the profile of the Miguel Keith. Video and photos of the tanker shot from inside a helicopter also show a Navy destroyer sailing alongside the ship.
Since the US ouster of Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid on Jan. 3, the Trump administration has set out to control the production, refining and global distribution of Venezuela’s petroleum products. Officials in President Donald Trump’s Republican administration have made it clear they see seizing the tankers as a way to generate cash as they seek to rebuild Venezuela’s battered oil industry and restore its economy.
Trump also has been trying to restrict the flow of oil to Cuba, which faces strict economic sanctions by the US and relies heavily on oil shipments from allies like Mexico, Russia and Venezuela.
Since the Venezuela operation, Trump has said no more Venezuelan oil will go to Cuba and that the Cuban government is ready to fall. Trump also recently signed an executive order that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, primarily pressuring Mexico because it has acted as an oil lifeline for Cuba.
Cosmonauts start spacewalk from ISS to examine mystery hole
Cosmonauts start spacewalk from ISS to examine mystery hole
- Russian media reported the investigation was probing the possibility US astronauts deliberately drilled the hole in order to get a sick colleague sent back home
- So far astronauts have only been able to examine the hole from inside the spacecraft
US military boards sanctioned oil tanker in Indian Ocean
- Tanker tracking website says Aquila II departed the Venezuelan coast after US forces captured then-President Nicolás Maduro
- Pentagon says it 'hunted' the vessel all the way from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean
WASHINGTON: US military forces boarded a sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking the ship from the Caribbean Sea, the Pentagon said Monday.
The Pentagon’s statement on social media did not say whether the ship was connected to Venezuela, which faces US sanctions on its oil and relies on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains.
However, the Aquila II was one of at least 16 tankers that departed the Venezuelan coast last month after US forces captured then-President Nicolás Maduro, said Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com. He said his organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document the ship’s movements.
According to data transmitted from the ship on Monday, it is not currently laden with a cargo of crude oil.
The Aquila II is a Panamanian-flagged tanker under US sanctions related to the shipment of illicit Russian oil. Owned by a company with a listed address in Hong Kong, ship tracking data shows it has spent much of the last year with its radio transponder turned off, a practice known as “running dark” commonly employed by smugglers to hide their location.
US Southern Command, which oversees Latin America, said in an email that it had nothing to add to the Pentagon’s post on X. The post said the military “conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction” on the ship.
“The Aquila II was operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean,” the Pentagon said. “It ran, and we followed.”
The US did not say it had seized the ship, which the US has done previously with at least seven other sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela.
A Navy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations, would not say what forces were used in the operation but confirmed the destroyers USS Pinckney and USS John Finn as well as the mobile base ship USS Miguel Keith were operating in the Indian Ocean.
In videos the Pentagon posted to social media, uniformed forces can be seen boarding a Navy helicopter that takes off from a ship that matches the profile of the Miguel Keith. Video and photos of the tanker shot from inside a helicopter also show a Navy destroyer sailing alongside the ship.
Since the US ouster of Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid on Jan. 3, the Trump administration has set out to control the production, refining and global distribution of Venezuela’s petroleum products. Officials in President Donald Trump’s Republican administration have made it clear they see seizing the tankers as a way to generate cash as they seek to rebuild Venezuela’s battered oil industry and restore its economy.
Trump also has been trying to restrict the flow of oil to Cuba, which faces strict economic sanctions by the US and relies heavily on oil shipments from allies like Mexico, Russia and Venezuela.
Since the Venezuela operation, Trump has said no more Venezuelan oil will go to Cuba and that the Cuban government is ready to fall. Trump also recently signed an executive order that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, primarily pressuring Mexico because it has acted as an oil lifeline for Cuba.
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