NASA asks SpaceX whether it could return 3 astronauts from the ISS in the event of an emergency following a coolant leak in the Russian spacecraft - Yahoo! Voices

• NASA has considered SpaceX for a backup program to instrumentality the ISS unit to Earth amid the Soyuz leak.

• NASA and Russia's abstraction bureau are investigating the leak, which began successful December.

• Two cosmonauts and 1 astronaut were scheduled to instrumentality location successful March successful the Soyuz capsule.

NASA has reached retired to Elon Musk's SpaceX to spot whether it was susceptible of returning 3 unit members from the International Space Station (ISS) aft a docked Russian spacecraft leaked coolant.

The American abstraction bureau said successful a blog station connected Friday it had asked astir whether SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft had the capableness to facilitate the instrumentality successful the lawsuit that an exigency arose.

The superior absorption was connected knowing the post-leak capabilities of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, the bureau added.

The Soyuz capsule was owed to instrumentality the 3 unit members successful March aft flying them to the ISS connected September 21 for a six-month mission, per NASA. The unit consists of 2 cosmonauts, Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, and 1 American astronaut, Frank Rubio.

NASA and Russia's abstraction bureau Roscosmos were moving unneurotic to analyse the leak and find the adjacent steps, per the agency.

"We person asked SpaceX a fewer questions connected their capableness to instrumentality further unit members connected Dragon if necessary, but that is not our premier absorption astatine this time," a NASA spokeswoman said successful a connection to Reuters connected December 28.

NASA and SpaceX didn't instantly respond to Insider's petition for comment.

The outer leak was archetypal detected successful the Soyuz capsule erstwhile 2 Roscosmos cosmonauts were preparing to spell connected a spacewalk, NASA said connected December 14.

Footage shared by NASA successful December showed the leak, which resembled achromatic particles, spraying retired of the Soyuz spacecraft, which is docked to the ISS.

Roscosmos said connected December 22 that it was considering a "rescue" ngo to ferry the unit members backmost to Earth earlier than expected, Reuters reported. This would impact flying an bare spacecraft to the ISS to prime them up, per the report.

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