A Russian Soyuz spacecraft took off overnight from Thursday to Friday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakhstan) towards the International Space Station, according to a live video broadcast from NASA, which operates the space station (ISS) with the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
The MS-23 rescue vessel, with no one on board, is due to dock with the ISS overnight from Saturday to Sunday. He must bring back to Earth next September two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut whose initial spacecraft was damaged
The take-off of this device was initially scheduled for mid-March and it was to transport a new crew of three people to the space station. He finally left empty in order to be able to bring back the three passengers stranded on board the ISS: the American Frank Rubio as well as the Russians Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitri Peteline.
On this subject: Roscosmos “planned” the launch of a rescue craft to the ISS on February 24
In the absence of a crew to replace them, the latter’s mission was extended until September, when they were originally due to return at the end of March. They will therefore spend a total of about a year in space, instead of six months. They will not be the first to stay so long in the ISS, this duration having already been equaled just last year.
A spectacular leak suffered by Soyuz MS-22
The two Russian cosmonauts and the American astronaut took off at the end of September 2022 with the Soyuz MS-22.
The vessels aboard which astronauts and cosmonauts arrive on the ISS then remain docked to the station throughout their stay, in order to be able to serve as a backup vehicle in the event of an emergency evacuation being necessary. They also leave on board the same craft.
But in December, the Soyuz MS-22 suffered a spectacular leak, due according to Moscow to the impact of a micrometeorite. The coolant leak had raised concerns about the temperature that might be reached inside the ship when it returned to Earth. Roscosmos said Tuesday that an “external impact” caused the leak, and ruled out a manufacturing defect.
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The Russian space agency has therefore decided that it can only be used in an emergency, and has chosen to send the MS-23 spacecraft as a replacement, which will bring the crew back in September. The damaged MS-22 ship must be undocked from the ISS and return to Earth empty, a priori at the end of next month.
Space cooperation between Moscow and Washington
In addition to the three crew members who came aboard the Soyuz, the ISS currently has four other passengers, members of the mission called Crew-5, who arrived with a SpaceX Dragon capsule in October 2022.
The American company must send their four replacements to the space station on Monday, as part of the Crew-6 mission: two NASA astronauts, an Emirati astronaut, and a Russian cosmonaut. After a handover of a few days, Crew-5 will descend back to Earth.
The ISS is one of the few fields of cooperation still underway between Moscow and Washington since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, launched a year ago, and the international sanctions that followed.