A Russian Soyuz spacecraft took off overnight from Thursday to Friday from Kazakhstan to the International Space Station (ISS). He must bring back to earth in September two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut whose ship was damaged.
The MS-23 rescue spacecraft took off, without anyone on board, from the Baikonur cosmodrome, according to a live video broadcast from NASA, which operates the space station (ISS) with the Russian space agency Roscosmos. It must dock with the ISS overnight from Saturday to Sunday.
The take-off of the device was initially scheduled for mid-March and it was to transport a new crew of three 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.
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 spend a total of about a year in space, instead of six months.
micrometeorite
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 then 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.
The Russian space agency therefore decided that it could only be used in an emergency. She chose to send the MS-23 ship 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.
A leak similar to the December incident also affected another Russian spacecraft, the Progress MS-21 cargo ship, docked at the ISS since October in mid-February. But this one was not intended to carry passengers. It undocked last week.
In addition to the three crew members who came aboard the Soyuz, the ISS currently has four other passengers, members of the Crew-5 mission and arrived with a SpaceX Dragon capsule in October 2022. The American company must send their four substitutes.
/ATS