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Moscow (AFP) – Russia will send a replacement Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) on February 20 to bring three crew members, two Russians and one American, to Earth following the capsule that was supposed to transport them suffered damage.
The Soyuz MS-22, currently attached to the ISS, experienced a spectacular coolant leak in mid-December. The images clearly showed a jet of particles coming out of the rear of the vehicle.
After examining the state of the apparatus, the Russian space agency (Roscosmos) considered it preferable to send another ship, the Soyuz MS-23, to bring the Russians Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitri Petelin and the American Frank Rubio.
The capsule “will be launched on February 20, 2023 without passengers” but with material, Roscosmos said in a statement. The takeoff of this ship was initially scheduled for March 16 to take three other passengers to the ISS.
The return date of the two Russian and American crew members, originally scheduled for March 28, was not announced, but their mission was “prolonged,” Roscosmos said.
The damaged capsule will return to Earth without passengers, according to the same source.
But the Russian agency does not rule out the possibility of using the ship to transport passengers in the event of “a particularly critical situation” aboard the ISS.
Currently, there are seven people on the ISS. Not counting the damaged MS-22, only one vehicle remains, the SpaceX Dragon, with a capacity for four crew members.
possible microimpact
NASA also had to hold a press conference this Wednesday to talk regarding this liquid leak detected on December 14 in the Soyuz spacecraft, when two Russian astronauts were preparing to make a space exit.
The ISS is one of the few sectors in which Russia and the United States still cooperate, following the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine on February 24 and the Western sanctions that followed.
The head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, last month thanked the solidarity of the Americans on board the ISS, who “reached out to us to help”, in a context in which relations between the Kremlin and the White House are in their lowest level.
The ISS was launched in 1998, during a time of collaboration between Moscow and Washington, following the space race between the two countries during the Cold War.
For Vitali Egorov, a Russian specialist in space issues, the decisions announced on Wednesday by Roscosmos are “optimal to guarantee the safety of (the crew) and minimize the damage inflicted on the space program.”
An initial assessment of the causes of the coolant leak mentioned possible ruptures caused by small meteorites of natural origin or by artificial debris in orbit, or a material failure.
Roscosmos ruled out any mechanical problem on Wednesday and confirmed that it was due to the impact of a micrometeorite. According to the Russian agency, this blow caused a hole of “less than a millimeter in diameter” in a refrigeration pipe.
This incident once once more called into question the quality of Russian systems, considered reliable but increasingly outdated.
Various technical problems, as well as corruption scandals, have tarnished the reputation of Moscow’s space sector in recent years, which rivals Washington’s advances.
© 2023 AFP
