A Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked overnight from Saturday to Sunday at the International Space Station in order to serve, next September, as a vehicle for the return to Earth of two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut, whose initial spacecraft has been damaged.
The MS-23 rescue craft took off Friday morning from Kazakhstan, with no one on board, and reached the space station following a journey of regarding two days, according to a NASA live video broadcast.
The American Frank Rubio as well as the Russians Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitri Peteline 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.
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, and they will therefore return on board this replacement ship following spending approximately 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 descend back to Earth.
