A replacement Soyuz is on the way for three crew members with a leaky craft docked to the International Space Station.
spacecraft is expected to launch four astronauts for NASA on Monday for its own docking about 24 hours later. Both events will be simulcast on Space.com from NASA Television. A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft launches without a crew, a rarity, from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on Feb. 24, 2023 local time. The spacecraft will replace a leaky Soyuz at the station for three crewmembers.
Troubles for the trio of Expedition 69 crew members began on Dec. 14 after their docked Soyuz, called MS-22, sprung a coolant leak. While the incident posed no immediate threat to the ISS or its activities, Russian federal space agencydetermined a new Soyuz was needed to replace the leaky MS-22. A micrometeoroid impact on the Soyuz has been cited as the leak's cause, Roscosmos has said.
Scheduling that Soyuz launch ran into quite a few hiccups. At first, Soyuz MS-23 was scheduled to fly a normal crew replacement mission for the late spring. Roscosmos pushed it up to Feb. 19 and elected to launch it without crew, to give three full seats for the stuck Soyuz MS-22 crew. Instead of people, it is carrying 945 pounds of supplies and a toy teddy bear to serve as aThe small teddy bear inside the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft to serve as a zero gravity indicator.
There were options to bring the crew home in the meantime in case of emergency; two cosmonauts could use the damaged MS-22, Roscosmos said, as two crew members would heat up the spacecraft to a lesser degree than three. Rubio, meanwhile, would use an extra seat on the already docked
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