Russia to launch rescue mission for stranded astronauts on International Space Station
Misty Severi
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Russia will send a rescue pod to the International Space Station next month, to rescue three stranded crew members after a micrometeoroid left a hole in their original vessel last month.
Representatives from Russia’s Roscosmos and NASA said the plan was to move up a launch that was scheduled for March, to Feb. 20 instead. The vessel will be empty when it goes up. Once the replacement is docked, the damaged Soyuz MS-22 capsule will return to the Earth.
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“This is the next Soyuz that was scheduled to fly in March,” said Joel Montalbano, the space station program manager at NASA, during a news conference. “It’ll just fly a little earlier.”
As a result, two cosmonauts and one astronaut will return home a few months later than initially planned. Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitriy Petelin of Russia, and Frank Rubio of NASA, were expected to return in March; however, it is unclear when they will return home now.
The strike was caused by a micrometeoroid that caused a hole in the craft’s radiator, which could cause the spacecraft to overheat during its return. The hole caused radiator coolant to leak into space, making it too difficult to repair in space.
Although the micrometeoroid strike did not cause an immediate danger for the astronauts and cosmonauts left on the station, it did cause NASA and Roscosmos to come up with contingency plans should an emergency arise. Currently, just the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft is suitable to transport four of the seven crew members, but could carry more in an emergency. Another alternative is using the damaged vehicle in the case of an emergency, albeit with a heightened risk.
“SpaceX has been extremely responsive,” Montalbano said, according to Axios. “But all of this is only for an emergency, only if we have to evacuate the ISS. We’re always looking at what we can do to ensure the safety of the crew.”
The micrometeoroid was about one millimeter in diameter and was traveling about seven kilometers a second, or more than 15,000 miles per hour. Because of the trajectory of the micrometeroid, it was determined that the culprit could not have been a different kind of debris, Roscosmos said.
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Because of the rearranging of the capsules, other launches to the space station later this year is expected to be delayed as well, according to NASA, including an upcoming SpaceX launch. More details on the future launches will be released in the next few weeks, Montalbano said.