Russia will send empty Soyuz capsule to ISS to pick up astronauts

Russia will send an empty replacement Soyuz capsule to the ISS next month to retrieve the two cosmonauts and an astronaut who are now stranded there. The replacement capsule is needed because the original Soyuz capsule has a leak.

The Soyuz MS-23 will be launched on February 20 to replace the current MS-22 capsule, says the Russian space agency Roscosmos, according to Reuters. The MS-22 is then sent back to Earth empty.

At the end of last year, it turned out that there was a leak in the Soyuz spacecraft, which was probably caused by a small meteorite less than 1mm wide. That leak was in an external cooling system of the MS-22 and allowed cooling material to escape. During the return flight, temperatures in the capsule can rise to 30 to 40 degrees Celsius. For that reason, Roscosmos and NASA do not want to use the capsule for the return flight. The organizations do not rule out using the MS-22 in an emergency. Due to the leak, no more space walks have been carried out in recent weeks.

The Soyuz MS-23 capsule was already planned to fly to the ISS, but in March and with the aim of taking astronauts to the ISS. The MS-23 is instead sent empty, something Roscosmos was already considering. The two cosmonauts and an astronaut who were initially going to return to Earth with MS-22, will now do so with the MS-23. This means they stay on the ISS ‘a few’ months longer; they were originally supposed to return to Earth in March. The astronauts in question, Sergei Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin and Frank Rubio, have been on the ISS since September.