Rescue Soyuz spacecraft could reach space station in February - Space.com

It volition beryllium a portion earlier backup comes for a abstraction presumption unit presently depending connected a leaky Soyuz to get home.

Should the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft beryllium deemed unsafe aft spouting coolant into abstraction Dec. 14, 2 cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut volition request to hold until February for a backup Soyuz to get astatine the International Space Station (ISS), a Russian abstraction authoritative said during a property league Thursday (Dec. 22).

"Our adjacent unit ... was scheduled to alert successful the mediate of March," said Sergei Krikalev, caput of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center adjacent Moscow, during the livestreamed NASA property conference.

The caller Soyuz connected the crushed planned for that unit could alternatively beryllium launched bare to retrieve the 3 ISS unit members if they are so stranded. But Krikalev said it tin lone beryllium "sent up a small earlier ... astir two, 3 weeks earlier is astatine the maximum what we tin bash astatine this point."

In photos: International Space Station astatine 20

The origin of the spread that caused the leak is inactive nether investigation, but 1 thought has been ruled out: it was not portion of the ongoing Geminid meteor shower, arsenic the trajectory was successful the incorrect direction, Joel Montalbano, NASA's ISS programme manager, said during the aforesaid briefing.

On Sunday (Dec. 18), NASA worked with cameras connected the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm. The survey recovered a tiny hole in the MS-22 that is the apt origin of the leak, but however the spread came to beryllium isn't yet known.

"We got immoderate enactment to bash with imagery to amended recognize if it was a meteoroid deed oregon if determination was a hardware issue, and that enactment is successful beforehand of us," Montalbano said. Another anticipation is simply a portion of space junk, but Krikalev said specified an entity would beryllium excessively tiny to way from the crushed arsenic the spread was lone 0.8 millimeters wide.

If Russia so fast-tracks the adjacent Soyuz to the abstraction station, the damaged MS-22 would travel backmost empty. "Roscosmos would program to instrumentality the existent Soyuz connected orbit and cod the information truthful they tin usage that for aboriginal evaluations," Montalbano said.

Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of "Why Am I Taller (opens successful caller tab)?" (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a publication astir abstraction medicine. Follow her connected Twitter @howellspace (opens successful caller tab). Follow america connected Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens successful caller tab) or Facebook (opens successful caller tab).