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Russia to send rescue spacecraft to bring back 3 astronauts from International Space Station

MOSCOW: Russia announced on Wednesday that it will send an empty spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) next month to bring home three astronauts whose planned return vehicle was damaged by a small meteorite impact.

The Russian space agency Roskosmos made the announcement after testing the airworthiness of the Soyuz MS-22 crew cabin attached to the ISS, which caused a radiator coolant leak in December.

Roscosmos and NASA officials said at a joint press briefing that an unmanned Soyuz spacecraft, MS-23, will be sent to the ISS on February 20 to bring Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio back to Earth.

“We’re not calling it a rescue Soyuz,” said Joel Montalbano, ISS program manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “I call it a spare Soyuz.

“Right now, the crew aboard the space station is safe.
MS-22 flew Petelin, Prokopyev and Rubio to the ISS in September after launching from the Russian-operated Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

They were due to return home in the same spacecraft in March, but their stay on the ISS will now be extended by a few extra months.

“I might have to find some more ice cream to reward them,” Montalbano joked.

MS-22 began leaking coolant on Dec. 14 — shortly before Russian cosmonauts were scheduled to begin their spacewalk — after it was struck by what U.S. and Russian space officials believe was a small space rock.

Montalbano said “everything points to a micrometeoroid” and not space debris or a technical problem.

Sergey Krikalev, executive director of Human Space Flight Programs at Roscosmos, said that “the current theory is that this damage was caused by a small particle about one millimeter in diameter.”

MS-23 was scheduled to fly with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and NASA’s Loral O’Hara to the ISS on March 16.

The decision to use the MS-23 to fly the current crew home, Krikalev said, was due to concerns about potential high temperatures in the damaged MS-22 during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.

He said it could potentially be used “in an emergency.”
Another emergency scenario involves the use of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, which is currently attached to the ISS after four astronauts flew to the space station on a six-month mission in October.

Montalbano said discussions are underway with SpaceX about using the Crew Dragon capsule to fly home with other astronauts aboard the ISS.

“We could safely secure crew members in the area where cargo normally returns to Dragon,” Montalbano said.
“All of this is for emergencies only, only if we need to evacuate the ISS,” a NASA official emphasized. “It’s not a nominal plan or anything like that.

Krikalev said the unmanned MS-22 will likely return to Earth in March after the replacement vehicle arrives.

It would bring back devices and experiments that are not “temperature sensitive,” he said.
When the original MS-23 crew will reach the ISS is still being worked out, Montalbano added.

Space remains a rare site of cooperation between Moscow and Washington since the start of Russia’s offensive in Ukraine and subsequent Western sanctions against Russia.

The ISS was launched in 1998 at a time of increased US-Russian cooperation following the Cold War “space race”.
Russia has been using aging but reliable Soyuz capsules to carry astronauts into space since the 1960s.

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