Russia will launch a new spacecraft to retrieve the ISS crew

 January 12, 2023

Next month, three crew members will use an unmanned spacecraft that Roscosmos will launch to the International Space Station as their return vehicle. The first return spacecraft appears to have been damaged by a small meteorite.

                          After the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft intended for their return suffered a radiator coolant leak that was reportedly brought on by a micrometeorite strike, Russia announced on Wednesday that it would soon launch an unmanned Soyuz spacecraft to bring two cosmonauts and a US astronaut back to Earth from the International Space Station.

Because of the damage, the capsule's inside may get dangerously heated during reentry, endangering its occupants.

Mission to be extended

The three crew members in question—NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergei Prokopyev, and Petelin—shall now prolong their mission by a few more months and return in the brand-new MS-23 spacecraft, which will reach the International Space Station on February 20.

The three were scheduled to stay at the station starting in September and ending in the middle of March.

Sergei Krikalev, executive director of Human Space Flight Programs at Roscosmos, said the MS-22 would return to Earth after their departure, carrying only equipment and experiments that are not "temperature sensitive." 

"Space is not a safe place, and not a safe environment. We have meteorites, we have a vacuum and we have a high temperature and we have complicated hardware that can fail," Krikalev said. "Now we are facing one of the scenarios ... we are prepared for this situation."

He said that if there were to be an emergency at the ISS before the replacement spacecraft arrived, the damaged capsule could still be used in a pinch despite the increased danger.

Despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing Western sanctions against Russia, collaboration between Moscow and Washington has persisted in the uncommon field of space.