The holes in the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft were drilled in 2018 by a man who was in zero gravity and did not have the necessary support. This was stated by the pilot-cosmonaut, Hero of Russia Mikhail Kornienko in an interview with the REN TV channel.
He explained that the 2.5-3 mm thick wall of the ship was drilled with a 2 mm drill. “Before drilling, the drill went over the duralumin. Apparently, the man was worried. In weightlessness it was, perhaps, not so convenient, there was no such emphasis. All this was done in a stressful state, as I understand it, and in a limited time. The man was in a hurry, and his drill did not come to a point, but drew several patterns on the casing before drilling a hole, ”said Kornienko.
According to him, in order to drill this hole, one did not need to have special locksmith skills and knowledge of the structure of the ship. In addition, the duralumin, from which the case wall was made, is soft metal, so it can be easily drilled.
In August 2018, a drop in air pressure was recorded on the ISS, and in December of the same year, cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergei Prokopyev, during their spacewalk, discovered a hole in the hull of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft, which docked to the ISS. Back in August, Prokopiev sealed a hole with a diameter of about 2 mm from the inside using epoxy.
Various versions have been expressed about the appearance of a hole in the Soyuz – from defects in the assembly of the spacecraft to deliberate damage to the Soyuz by American astronauts. It was later revealed that the hole was drilled during the manufacture of the Soyuz.
