Last updated on February 23rd, 2023 at 01:29 pm
Russia announced on February 21 that three astronauts stuck on the International Space Station (ISS) due to a leak in their return capsule will return to Earth in September on a Soyuz MS-23 replacement spacecraft.
Two months ago, the cooling system of the Soyuz MS-22 capsule carrying Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin as well as American astronaut Francisco Rubio, whose mission had been scheduled to end in March, began leaking. As a result, the three men have been stranded in space since they are unable to return to Earth.
“(Their return journey) is now scheduled for September 2023 aboard Soyuz MS-23,” stated the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
The new Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft will launch on February 24 and dock with the ISS on February 26. In March, the damaged MS-22 spacecraft is scheduled to land without a crew.
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NASA and Roscosmos agree that the MS-22 spacecraft’s leak last year was caused by a micrometeoroid — a small piece of space rock striking the capsule at high velocity.
It is thought that a secondary leak in the cooling system of the Progress MS-21 cargo spacecraft, which was deorbited last Friday, was triggered by an external force earlier this month.
Roscosmos and NASA have had to reschedule their timetables and postpone spacewalks as a result of both breaches.
“Astronauts are constantly exposed to a high danger of life-threatening situations during space missions,” Roscosmos stated. Micrometeoroid collisions on a spacecraft or orbital station have occurred previously, but they have never had as severe repercussions as the Soyuz MS-22 incident.
No nation has a surveillance system capable of detecting micrometeoroids of this size — around 1 millimeter in diameter.
It stated that replacing the Soyuz cooling system would be expensive and add weight to the capsule, but it would consider prior problems when designing new spacecraft.
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