MOSCOW. Feb 12 (Interfax-AVN) - Roscosmos has accelerated the project involving cosmonauts' interaction with an anthropomorphic robot, corporation head Dmitry Rogozin said on Tuesday.
"It was decided after the spacewalk of cosmonauts Kononenko and Prokopyev to step up studies of the interaction between cosmonauts and a remote-controlled anthropomorphic robot," Rogozin wrote on Twitter.
This is necessary for "safe extravehicular activity," he wrote.
On August 30, 2018, an air leak was detected on the ISS. The crew checked every compartment of the Soyuz spaceship and found the hole. Air was leaking from the habitation module, not the landing capsule, which meant a safe return to the Earth would still be possible.
Russian cosmonauts applied a sealant to the hole and covered it with patches. An ultrasound scan showed that the leak was stopped. Now specialists are trying to establish the hole's origin.
Russian cosmonauts, who went on a spacewalk on December 11, took samples of the sealant and the micrometeorite shield. The samples were brought to the Earth for studying.
Senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Biomedical Problems told Interfax that microorganisms inhabiting the ISS are unable to make a hole in the skin of the Soyuz.
A number of theories have been suggested: that the hole was due to a production defect, intentional damage done to the craft's hull by a U.S. astronaut in connection with health problems, and a collision with a micrometeorite or piece of space debris.