Cosmonaut instructed to immediately leave area as he discovers 'blob' growing outside International Space Station

A Russian cosmonaut and his colleague venturing outside the International Space Station (ISS) on a spacewalk were told to ‘immediately’ leave the area after finding a ‘blob’ in space.

Astronauts are trained not to panic, but we bet their hearts still skipped a beat or two.

In the end, everything went well.

And they eventually learned what the ‘blob’ actually was.

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The reason why the Russian cosmonaut was ordered to leave immediately

Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub went on a spacewalk outside the ISS when they spotted a weird blob in space.

They were ordered to leave the area immediately and return to the International Space Station.

As it turns out, the blob was coolant leaking from a radiator, but it was still enough to contaminate Kononenko’s tether.

As a result, the tether was bagged and left outside ISS when the spacewalk ended.

The two astronauts managed to ‘isolate’ the leak so as not to contaminate anything else, while also collecting enough data for the engineers back home to analyze.

Both astronauts are fine.

In fact, they’re better than fine.

Astronauts age slower while they’re in space, which explains why Kononenko looks 40-something even though he’s actually in his early 60s.

About the International Space Station

The International Space Station – or ISS for short – is a large space station maintained by five space agencies: ESA (Europe), JAXA (Japan), Roscosmos (Russia), CSA (Canada) and of course NASA.

It was launched in 1998 and it is expected to remain operational until the end of 2030.

One thing that people might not realize about the ISS is that it travels at an incredible speed.

It travels at 27,600KM/H (17,100MPH), which means it can make 16 orbits of Earth every single day.