Russia will send a replacement Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) on February 20 to bring three crew members, two Russians and one American, to Earth after the capsule that was supposed to transport them suffered damage.
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The Soyuz MS-22, currently attached to the ISS, experienced a spectacular coolant leak in mid-December. The images clearly showed a jet of particles coming out of the rear of the vehicle.
After examining the state of the device, the Russian space agency (Roscosmos) considered it preferable to send another ship, Soyuz MS-23, to bring the Russians Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitri Petelin and the American Frank Rubio.
The capsule “it will be launched on February 20, 2023 without passengers” but with material, Roscosmos reported in a statement. The takeoff of this ship was initially scheduled for March 16 to take three other passengers to the ISS.
The return date of the two Russian and American crew members, originally scheduled for March 28, was not announced but his mission was “prolonged for several months,” said the director of manned flights at Roscosmos, Sergei Krikaliov, at a press conference.
The damaged capsule will return to Earth without occupantsprobably “between the middle and the end of March,” he added.
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emergency scenarios
(The Americans) reached out to us to help
Pending the arrival of the replacement ship, in case an emergency causes the need to evacuate the ISS, the Russian and American space agencies are studying various scenarios.
However, they stressed that this possibility it was still highly unlikely. The first would be for all three crew members to return aboard the damaged Soyuz, despite concerns about the temperature that could be reached inside the craft at landing.
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The second would be to decrease “the thermal load” on board the Soyuz by “reducing the crew.” One of them would then be transported by a SpaceX ship, also currently docked to the ISS.
In addition to the three crew members who arrived aboard the Soyuz, the ISS currently has four other occupants, who arrived aboard this SpaceX Dragon capsule.
The idea would be to secure a fifth person on board“in the area where cargoes are normally found,” explained Joel Montalbano, head of the ISS program at NASA.
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A micrometeorite put the ship at risk
(the micrometeorite) opened a hole less than a millimeter in diameter
The leak was detected on December 14 in the Soyuz when two Russian cosmonauts were preparing to make a space exit.
In an initial assessment of the causes of the coolant leak, the possibility of a micrometeorite impact of natural origin, of artificial debris in orbit or of a material breakdown.
On Wednesday, Roscomos claimed that the version of a micrometeorite impact “has been experimentally proven.”
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According to the Russian agency, it opened a hole of “less than a millimeter in diameter” in a refrigeration tube.
Given the speed at which experts believe the object struck the ISS, it cannot be more than a “random direction meteorite”, and not a waste that “it could not have remained in that orbit” at that speed, detailed Krikaliov, ruling out any kind of mechanical problem.
The ISS is one of the few sectors in which Russia and the United States still cooperate.after the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, on February 24, and the Western sanctions that followed.
The head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, last month thanked the solidarity of the Americans on board the ISS, who “reached out to us to help”, in a context in which relations between the Kremlin and the White House are in their lowest level.
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The ISS was launched in 1998, during a time of collaboration between Moscow and Washington, after the space race between the two countries during the Cold War.
For Vitali Egorov, a Russian specialist in space issues, the decisions announced on Wednesday by Roscosmos are “optimal to guarantee the safety of (the crew) and minimize the damage inflicted on the space program.”
AFP
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