STAR CITY. Feb 12 (Interfax-AVN) - The joint flight of a Russian-German- American three-member space crew to the International Space Station in 2018 was important for overcoming political differences, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman said.
It is hard to overestimate the importance of that flight for overcoming political barriers and improving mutual understanding among nations, he said.
The ambassador was visiting Star City, where he held a formal meeting with the crew of ISS Expedition 56/57: Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergei Prokopyev, German astronaut Alexander Gerst (European Space Agency), and NASA astronaut Serena Aunon-Chancellor.
Huntsman said it was a great honor to represent the U.S. and its people.
The Prokopyev-Gerst-Aunon crew arrived at the ISS aboard a Soyuz MS-09 in June 2018. Early on August 30, they found an air leak on board. The crew checked all compartments and found a hole in the spacecraft's upper orbital module, not in the re-entry vehicle, so there was no obstacle to their returning to Earth.
Later, Russian cosmonauts sealed and patched the hole and confirmed the absence of an air leak. Specialists are now trying to establish how the hole appeared in the spacecraft.
During a spacewalk on December 11, Prokopyev and another Russian cosmonaut, Oleg Kononenko, took samples of the seal and micrometeorite protection. They were delivered to Earth for analysis on December 20, together with the Prokopyev-Gerst-Aunon crew.
On January 10, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said that experts would determine the cause of what happened in the very near future.