SEATTLE — Russia will launch a Soyuz spacecraft and not using a crew to the Worldwide Area Station in February after concluding a broken Soyuz spacecraft docked there can’t safely return its crew to Earth.
In an announcement Jan. 11, the Russian area company Roscosmos introduced that the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft will launch to the ISS and not using a crew Feb. 20. It can exchange the Soyuz MS-22 at the moment docked on the station, which can return to Earth uncrewed.
Soyuz MS-22 suffered a coolant leak Dec. 14 as Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin have been making ready for a spacewalk. The spacewalk was known as off as coolant spewed from the leak for hours.
Roscosmos mentioned in its assertion that the opening within the coolant line was lower than one millimeter in diameter. It mentioned that it had been “experimentally confirmed” {that a} micrometeoroid affect induced the opening, however didn’t elaborate on the way it reached that conclusion, together with whether or not they had dominated out an orbital particles affect.
Soyuz MS-22 launched to the station Sept. 21 with Prokopyev, Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio on board. They have been to stay on the station till March, when Soyuz MS-23 launched with Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara. Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio would then return to Earth on Soyuz MS-22.
Underneath the brand new plan, Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio will lengthen their stays for an unspecified size, returning to Earth on Soyuz MS-23. Roscosmos didn’t announce when Kononenko, Chub and O’Hara would go to the station, presumably on Soyuz MS-24.
The announcement didn’t point out if this may have an effect on different missions to the station, together with the SpaceX Crew-6 mission scheduled to launch in February. NASA is holding a briefing later Jan. 11 to supply extra particulars about what it described in a media advisory as “the ahead technique for uninterrupted human operations aboard the Worldwide Area Station.”
