On December 4, three new astronauts arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) joining three others who had been there since June. On the 20th of the same month, six days ago, the trio that inhabited the ISS since June (the American Serena Auñón-Chancellor, the German Alexander Gerst and the Russian Sergey Prokopyev) returned to earth aboard the Soyuz, the spacecraft a Russian man responsible for transporting people between Earth and the orbiting structure of the planet.
Everything would be quite normal if there was no anxiety in the air: the scientists responsible for the mission here on Earth were waiting to analyze a problem that was detected in the Russian spacecraft - a hole that affected the module's pressurizing system while it was still attached to the ISS in space. The astronauts made a cut around the hole and sealed it immediately, but brought the fragments to be analyzed.
Attempted sabotage? Upon arriving on Earth, the cosmonaut Prokopyev confirmed that the hole had been made from the inside out on the spacecraft, raising suspicions, even of sabotage. The Russian, however, dismissed this possibility on the part of his fellow astronauts who inhabited the ISS with him. Now, specialized agencies in Russia are investigating the case to determine the origin of the hole in the Soyuz. No conclusions have been reached so far by the investigators, but it also takes into account the possibility that the hole was made here on earth before Souyz led the new astronauts to live on the ISS. Nonetheless, damage to the spacecraft did not put mission members at risk when they returned from space.
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