New Delhi:
Last year, the tiny hole aboard the International Space Station (ISS) that controversy in August of last year is still creating news. According to new reports, Russia now knows the source of the hole, but it doesn't look like NASA has been informed.
Recently, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos said that the investigation into the incident had been fruitful. Rogozin was talking to the participants of a youth science conference themed around cosmonautics.
"[The hole] was in the living quarters [of the capsule], it has long since burned up upon reentry. We took all the samples. We know exactly what happened, but we won't tell you anything," he said, as reported by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
"We do need to retain some sort of secrecy," he added, likely as a tongue-in-cheek remark, considering his young audience.
The hole was discovered in August 2019 when astronauts aboard the ISS noticed that they were slowly but steadily losing air pressure.
A tiny, 2 millimetre hole in the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft, the Roscosmos shuttle used to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS. When it arrives, it docks onto the Rassvet module and is used as living quarters and a potential life raft until part of it returns to Earth, carrying astronauts whose mission has concluded,
The astronauts plugged the hole with epoxy and tape, and embarked on an investigation, even conducting a spacewalk to inspect the outside of the spacecraft to determine if the hole had been punched by a micrometeoroid - because if tiny rocks could punch holes in the ISS, that would be valuable information.
