December 1, 2023
Jasmin Moghbeli, who is the current commander aboard the International Space Station, had almost two peaceful months in her new job until something went awry Oct. 26.
An apparent leak of coolant from a Russian laboratory module was spied by the crew floating passed their windows. It follows similar leaks that struck a Russian Soyuz crew ferry craft and a Russian Progress cargo ship within the past year.
Moghbeli reported the sighting to Houston. She said she would go check it out herself. She was asked by Houston if she could confirm the point of origin, since it was difficult to see that from the ground.
“Yeah, there’s a leak coming from the radiator on the MLM,” Moghbeli said. The MLM is the Multipurpose Laboratory Module, also called “Nauka.” It’s the newest module of the space station, having launched on a Russian Proton rocket on July 21, 2021.
“We copy and we think we concur. We just confirmed it with video and they’re seeing it here on the ground,” Houston Mission Control replied. “Jaws [a nickname for Moghbeli], can you please close the cupola shutters?”
Less than a minute later, Moghbeli confirmed the shutters were closed. This was presumably to prevent the surface of the windows being contaminated by the leaking coolant. About 20 minutes after that, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen confirmed to Mission Control that the gym and lab shutters on the US side of the space station had also been closed.
NASA stated in a blog post, “The crew aboard station was never in any danger.”
Later, Moghbeli took pictures of Iran. Because of the weather over Iran and her busy work schedule, it was three months into her time in space before she gazed down on Tehran. “This may be the closest I will ever get to where my parents were born and raised,” she commented.
She sent the pictures from space to her parents, now living in Texas, and messaged with them about what could be seen in the pictures.
Moghbeli was born in 1983 in Bad Nauheim, Germany, after her parents fled the revolution. She was reared in Baldwin, New York.
