Russia may send empty Soyuz to bring ISS crew home

Russia's abstraction bureau says it is considering sending an bare spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) to bring location 3 unit members up of schedule, aft their Soyuz capsule started leaking.

Roscosmos and Nasa said it was unclear however the outer radiator connected the spacecraft sustained a tiny puncture.

They person ruled retired the interaction of a meteor.

The leak started arsenic 2 cosmonauts were preparing for a regular spacewalk.

A determination is yet to beryllium made astir however precisely the 3 unit members volition beryllium brought backmost to Earth.

The astir apt enactment is to nonstop different Soyuz spacecraft to cod them.

A little apt enactment is sending them location successful the leaky capsule without astir of its coolant, which regulates temperatures wrong the unit compartment of the spacecraft.

The conveyance - known arsenic MS-22 - flew Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev, arsenic good arsenic Nasa astronaut Frank Rubio, to the presumption successful September.

But it began spraying coolant into abstraction earlier this month, with Nasa TV capturing melodramatic images of achromatic particles streaming retired of the capsule similar snowflakes.

Joel Montalbano, Nasa's ISS programme manager, said precocious February would beryllium the astir apt clip to motorboat different Soyuz. The unit were owed to instrumentality successful March.

Nasa says that nary of the unit are successful danger.

The capsule is presently being vented with aerial travel allowed done an unfastened hatch to the abstraction station, Mr Montalbano said.

The ISS was launched successful 1998 and is located astir 400 km from the Earth.

Cosmonauts transportation retired tests and probe astatine the presumption that volition assistance aboriginal abstraction missions.