The Roscosmos agency anticipated the departure of the Soyuz-23 ship to bring the Russians Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitri Petelin and the American Frank Rubio to Earth.
Russia will send on February 20 a soyuz ship to the International Space Station (ISS) to bring Earth to three astronautstwo Russians and an American, following the capsule that was to transport them suffered damage.
The Soyuz-23 capsule, which was scheduled to take off on March 16 with three crew members, “will be launched on February 20, 2023 without passengers,” the Russian space agency (Roscosmos) said in a statement. Russian astronauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitri Petelin and American Frank Rubio, currently aboard the ISS, will “return to Earth” on that spacecraft, it added.
According to the head of Roscosmos, the unmanned flight allows advance launch from the spaceship to perform a rescue.
“After the situation that occurred in the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft on the ISS, two launch variants of the Soyuz MS-23 were discussed, with a cosmonaut on board, or in an unmanned regime,” he explained.
Borisov indicated that the variant of the flight with a single cosmonaut would require making changes to the ship and increasing the preparation of the crew, so the launch would be postponed by several weeks.
The crew members of the Russian segment of the ISS informed the ground control center last December that a sensor indicated that the pressure had dropped in the Soyuz hull cooling system, indicating a leak, which was “visually confirmed”.
This leak forced the cancellation of the spacewalk in which Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitri Petelin were to participate.
Russian cosmonaut Anna Kíkina took photos and recorded videos of the Soyuz hull with a camera mounted on a robotic arm attached to the Naúka module.
The damage occurred to the hull of the Soyuz equipment and propulsion segment, which is also made up of the descent module and work and rest compartment.
On November 25, Prokofiev and Petelin’s spacewalk had to be canceled due to a problem with one of the diving suits.
In mid-August, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemiev also returned to the ISS early due to problems with his diving suit during an extravehicular activity.
With information from EFE and AFP
