The new astronaut ship Starliner is stuck on the ISS space station, its helium leaks are being investigated

Internationally Astronauts were woken up on the ISS space station on Thursday morning Finnish time. The nine astronauts were taken to shelter in three ships that are docked at the station.

One of them is a brand new entrant, the Starliner built by the Boeing company, which is just on test flight.

The ship was supposed to return to Earth more than two weeks ago, with two astronauts.

However, a number of control valve leaks have been detected on the Starliner, which are currently being investigated by space engineers.

Come back while waiting, the ship offered shelter for a while.

The alarm only lasted an hour. The US space agency NASA did not say why the astronauts were moved.

However, experts say the cause was the breakup of a Russian satellite. It scattered fragments into Earth’s orbit, says Space.com.

Fragments move in space at such a high speed that even a small piece hitting the space station could cause a lot of destruction.

International the space station ISS follows the terrestrial one Greenwich GMT time. It is also British time.

According to the European Space Agency, Esa, the astronauts were probably sleeping when they were woken up.

Nasa says the escape to the ships was a “precautionary measure.” It did not specify what caused the alarm.

Satellites the next attempt Leolabs guessed that the space junk came from a satellite.

Signs suggest that the Russian satellite Resurs-P1 has broken up. Parts of it came off, wrote Leolabs in the message service X.

An estimate of more than a hundred fragments came off the Resurs-P1.

The Resurs-P1 satellite was sent into space in June 2013. It operated until December 2021, beyond its expected lifetime, kertoo RussianSpaceWeb.

Starlinerin had to return to Earth on Wednesday. However, NASA is still solving the ship’s problems. The return flight is now planned for the beginning of July.

Astronauts Sunny Williams and Butch Wilmore waiting to return to Earth.

They flew the Starliner to the space station after delays on June 5, even though the ship had already detected helium gas leaks before departure.

Helium is the propellant gas in the Starliner. It allows you to control the vessel with the small nozzles of the vessel.

The leak on the ground before departure was very small. Engineers said it won’t affect flight.

Since then, however, four more leaks have been detected. As the Starliner approached the space station, a total of five control valves out of 28 tripped.

Starlinerin the flight was supposed to last for eight days. Now it has already stretched to the fourth week, more than 21 days.

Nasa has previously stated that even several leaks are not a danger to the flight. According to NASA, the Starliner still has enough helium in its tanks.

Nasa stated that space engineers now want to investigate the faults, however. Only then will the craft return to the Earth’s atmosphere and finally to the ground.

You can see that the lower part of the Starliner with its helium tanks burns and is destroyed in the atmosphere. This is how NASA engineers lose information about what is the cause of the helium leaks.

Starlinerilla there is still permission to return to the country if an emergency threatens.

A rocket engineer Adam Baker, says the British public broadcaster BBCthat he understands that Nasa wants to investigate the causes of the leaks.

However, it should have thoroughly investigated the leaks before the Starliner left. However, the departure was very late.

The test flight was supposed to test how the Starliner works under the guidance of astronauts. Of course, the ship can fly to the station without human guidance.

If everything threatens to go wrong, the astronauts can be brought to Earth on another ship, i.e. SpaceX’s Dragon, which also transports astronauts to the station.

However, SpaceX is Starliner’s competitor in the new “space taxi service”. Therefore, such a flight would be embarrassing for Boeing.

Dragon has been carrying astronauts and also cargo to the ISS for years.

Staliner and Dragon will carry astronauts to the station throughout the 2020s. NASA no longer has to rely on the Russian Soyuz.

For years in the 2010s, the Soyuz was the only ship that astronauts could use to get to the ISS space station.