To bring the astronauts home, a spare spacecraft will be launched to replace damaged one.
BREVARD, Fla. — NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin are faced with extending their stay aboard the International Space Station by several months and will require a new ride home after their Russian MS-22 Soyuz spacecraft sprang a leak last month.
"I'm calling it a replacement Soyuz," he said."There's no immediate need for the crew to come home today."Initially set to fly the next rotation of Russian cosmonauts to the station in mid-March, the MS-23 Soyuz spacecraft is now being repurposed to launch as an empty lifeboat to ferry the MS-22 crew home later this year. The empty spacecraft is set to launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Feb. 20.
According to Montalbano, the space station remains safe, and the crew members are healthy enough to remain in space while this plan plays out."They're prepared to stay until the September launch date, if that's the case," said Montalbano."If that launch date moves up earlier, then they're prepared to come home earlier.""The awesome thing about our crews are they're willing to help wherever we ask," he said.
After a joint investigation conducted by NASA and Roscosmos, the space agencies are confident that the damage was caused by a micrometeoroid impact that resulted in a hole of about one millimeter in diameter in the coolant loop. The Russian Soyuz MS-22 crew ship is pictured on Oct. 8, 2022, in the foreground docked to the Rassvet module as the International Space Station orbited 264 miles above Europe.Instead of returning crew as expected, roughly two weeks after the replacement MS-23 Soyuz docks at the station, the damaged MS-22 spacecraft will be outfitted as a cargo transport ship.
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