The Russian Soyuz rescue spacecraft docked overnight from Saturday to Sunday at the International Space Station (ISS). It must serve, next September, as a vehicle for the return to earth of three astronauts, whose spacecraft has been damaged.
After taking off Friday morning from Kazakhstan, with no one on board, the MS-23 spacecraft reached the ISS following a journey of regarding two days, according to a live video broadcast from the American space agency NASA.
He must bring back to earth the American Frank Rubio as well as the Russians Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitri Peteline, who took off at the end of September 2022 with the Soyuz MS-22. But in December, this vessel suffered a spectacular leak while it was docked with the ISS, due according to Moscow to the impact of a micrometeorite.
Seven people on the ISS
The Russian space agency therefore decided that it might only be used in an emergency and chose to send the MS-23 spacecraft as a replacement. The mission of the three crew members has been extended until September. They will return aboard this replacement ship following spending regarding a year in space.
The damaged MS-22 ship must be undocked from the ISS and return to earth empty, a priori at the end of next month.
In addition to the three crew members who came aboard the Soyuz, the ISS currently has four other passengers, who arrived with a SpaceX ship and are members of the mission called Crew-5.
They are to be joined next week by Crew-6, which includes two Americans, an Emirati and a Russian, and whose takeoff is scheduled for Sunday night to Monday from Florida, in the United States. After a handover of a few days, Crew-5 will come back down to earth.
/ATS
