ST. PETERSBURG, September 18. /TASS/. Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos knows where the infamous hole in the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft came from but will not disclose the information, Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin said at a meeting with students at the Ustinov Baltic State Technical University (Voenmeh) in St. Petersburg.

"The hole was found in the spacecraft’s habitation module, which had burned up long ago. We collected all the necessary samples and it is clear to us what happened, but we won’t tell you anything," Rogozin said in response to a student’s question.

On August 30, 2018, a drop in pressure was detected at the International Space Station (ISS). It turned out that the pressure plunge had been caused by an air leak after the Soyuz spacecraft docked to the station, coming from a hole in the spacecraft’s habitation module. A few days later, experts on Earth concluded that the hole had been drilled from inside the Soyuz.

According to a TASS source in the space industry, someone could have made the hole before the spacecraft’s launch to the ISS, concealing it with a sealant plug from the outside. Following nearly two months of vacuum conditions (between June 8 and August 30, 2018), the sealant dried up and the change in pressure forced the plug out into a space between the module’s outer surface and the spacecraft’s meteorite shield.

Russian cosmonauts collected a number of samples from the hole’s surface, which were later brought to Earth and handed over to investigators.