Russia plans to launch new Soyuz spacecraft to exchange a leaky one docked on the ISS

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked to the Worldwide House Station (ISS) started leaking coolant early final month, resulting in considerations about whether or not the automobile can be protected to move ISS crew members again to Earth. 

NASA and Russian house company Roscosmos have now introduced they are going to be sending a alternative spacecraft for NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin during which to journey dwelling. A SpaceX Crew Dragon can be obtainable as a contingency possibility ought to or not it’s required.

Roscosmos will ship a alternative Soyuz referred to as MS-23 to the ISS, launching on February twentieth so it may be used to return the astronauts to Earth. This mission had been scheduled to launch in March carrying new crew members, however it would now launch earlier and with no crew.

NASA is referring to the brand new Soyuz as a alternative automobile, not a rescue, and is emphasizing that the house station crew is protected. “We’re not calling it a rescue Soyuz. Proper now, the crew is protected aboard the house station,” Joel Montalbano, Worldwide House Station program supervisor at NASA’s Johnson House Heart in Houston, stated in a briefing. “There’s no quick want for the crew to return dwelling at the moment. All of the methods are working.”

A picture of the injury to the docked Soyuz was obtained utilizing the house station’s robotic arm, displaying that there’s a gap via the Soyuz radiator in addition to the pipe supplying coolant. With coolant from the system having leaked out, it could be harmful to fly within the automobile because the temperatures might attain excessive ranges throughout a return journey to Earth.

“The principle drawback to land the present Soyuz with the crew can be thermal situations as a result of we misplaced warmth rejection functionality on Soyuz,” Sergei Krikalev, Human House Flight Packages government director at Roscosmos, defined within the briefing. Between the physique warmth of crew members, warmth generated by tools, and the warmth brought on by friction because the automobile travels via the ambiance, the temperatures within the crew and tools compartments might attain unsafe ranges. 

When the brand new Soyuz arrives on the house station, tools will probably be moved from the previous automobile to the brand new one. Then the brand new Soyuz will probably be used to carry the crew again to Earth, and the previous Soyuz will probably be landed as normal however with out crew so it may be checked for injury and its results on efficiency.

“The returning Soyuz will probably be taking some temperature measurements to measure how the automobile does on this situation, such that if we ever had a necessity sooner or later, now we have some further knowledge,” Montalbano stated. “So we’re going to completely use this automobile all the way in which till it lands again on Earth.”

There’s additionally a chance of SpaceX utilizing its presently docked Crew-5 Crew Dragon automobile as a backup to return astronauts to Earth if needed. NASA says it’s in touch with SpaceX relating to the state of affairs, however it is a contingency plan solely and shouldn’t be needed if the crew can journey on the brand new Soyuz. 

As for the reason for the leak, Krikalev stated that their investigation revealed it was not brought on by a technological or manufacturing situation. This had been a priority as this was not the primary time a Soyuz had leaked whereas docked to the ISS — an analogous Soyuz leak occurred in 2018. On the time, Roscosmos moderately bizarrely claimed that the leak might have been brought on by sabotage drilling moderately than a producing defect.

Many observers initially thought the newest leak might have been brought on by a micrometeoroid influence, notably because it occurred across the time of the Geminid meteor bathe when Earth passes via a area of particles in its orbit. A micrometeoroid strike nonetheless appears the more than likely rationalization for the injury, with Krikalev saying that experiments confirmed comparable injury brought on by a particle round 1mm in diameter and touring at 7 kilometers per second. Nevertheless, this influence was unrelated to the meteor bathe as the outlet is in a unique location from the route the Geminids come from.

NASA says it would announce the exact dates for the following few months of deliberate flights within the subsequent weeks.