Russia announced bold plan to rescue three Soyuz astronauts stranded in space

The Russian and US space agencies said they would implement an extremely bold and risky plan to return astronauts to Earth after the coolant leak incident on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft.

On January 11, Roscosmos and NASA – two Russian and American space agencies – officially announced a plan to rescue three astronauts. Sergey Prokopyev, Dimitry Petelin of Roscosmos and Frank Rubio from NASA, it is the crew of the Souz MS-22 spacecraft which gathered in mid-December 2022.

According to Scientific alertRussia said it would implement Roscosmos’ once-planned bold plan to send a completely empty Soyuz MS-23 ship to the ISS to replace the return trip.

It is also planned that the damaged Soyuz MS-22 will be returned to Earth empty.

The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft during its launch into space in September 2022.

Soyuz MS-22 during its launch into space in September 2022.

This is an unprecedented action Because in the past, Soyuz ships were always manned – which made the scientific community fear that this would increase the difficulty of the mission, because if there was a driver, Russia would need 2 Soyuz ships to steal and recover the 3 people. in the crew above. .

Previously, the American side also proposed another alternative: sending a Space X craft to the ISS to retrieve the above astronauts.

However, the mission of these three astronauts will last for some time instead of returning to Earth in March as planned.

The ISS program director at NASA’s Johnson Space Center said: “We don’t call it the Soyuz rescue. I call it the Soyuz replacement. Right now, the crew is safe on the Space Station.”

Previously, a NASA video from December 14, 2022 showed the Russian Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft massively losing coolant while docked with the ISS. The incident also caused the astronauts on that ship to cancel an upcoming spacewalk.

At a press conference on January 11, two Russian and American space agencies concluded that the cause of the incident was a small meteorite collision.

Along with the announcement of the extension of the Soyuz MS-22 astronauts’ mission for a few months and the launch of a replacement Soyuz spacecraft, Roscosmos also decided to postpone the plan to launch the next Soyuz manned spacecraft.

This spacecraft will carry Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolay Chub, as well as NASA cosmonaut Loral O’Hara, and was scheduled to launch in spring 2023, but the trip will now be postponed until fall, according to TASS reported on January 12.

Article source: NLD