A Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked overnight from Saturday to Sunday at the International Space Station (ISS) in order to serve, next September, as a vehicle for the return to Earth of two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut, whose original ship was damaged.
The MS-23 rescue craft lifted off Friday morning from Kazakhstan, with no one on board, and arrived at the space station after a journey of about two days, according to a live video feed from NASA.
A spectacular getaway
The American Frank Rubio, as well as the Russians Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitri Peteline took off at the end of September 2022 with the Soyuz MS-22. But in December, this ship suffered a spectacular leak while attached to the ISS, due to the impact of a micrometeorite according to Moscow.
Therefore, the Russian space agency decided that it could only be used in an emergency and opted to send the MS-23 spacecraft as a replacement.
The mission of the three crew members has been extended until September, so they will return aboard this replacement ship after spending approximately a year in space.
Return of the damaged ship to Earth at the end of February
The damaged MS-22 ship must be undocked from the ISS and returned to Earth empty, a priori at the end of next month.
In addition to the three crew members who arrived aboard the Soyuz, the ISS currently has four other passengers, who arrived with a SpaceX ship and are members of the mission called Crew-5.
They will be joined next week by Crew-6, which includes two Americans, an Emirati and a Russian, and is scheduled to take off Sunday night through Monday from Florida, USA. After a handover of a few days, Crew-5 will descend back to Earth.
Source: BFM TV
