Russia will send on February 20th a soyuz ship to the International Space Station (ISS) to bring Earth three astronautstwo Russians and an American, after the capsule that was to carry them was damaged.

The Soyuz-23 capsule, which was scheduled to take off on March 16 with three crew members, “will launch on February 20, 2023 without passengers,” the Russian space agency (Roscosmos) said in a statement. Russian astronauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitri Petelin and American Frank Rubio, currently aboard the ISS, will “return to Earth” on that ship, he added.

According to the head of Roscosmos, unmanned flight allows early launch from the spaceship to perform a rescue.

“After the situation that occurred in the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft on the ISS, two launch variants of the Soyuz MS-23 were discussed, with a cosmonaut on board or in an unmanned regime,” he explained.

Borisov indicated that the variant of the single-cosmonaut flight would require making changes to the ship and increasing crew readiness, so the launch would be delayed by several weeks.

Crew members of the Russian segment of the ISS notified the ground control center last December a sensor indicated that the pressure had dropped in the Soyuz hull cooling system, indicating a leak, which was “visually confirmed”.

This leak forced the cancellation of the spacewalk in which Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitri Petelin were supposed to participate.

Russian cosmonaut Anna Kíkina took photos and video of the Soyuz hull with a camera mounted on a robotic arm attached to the Naúka module.

The damage involved the hull of the Soyuz equipment and propulsion segment, which also consists of the descent module and the work and rest compartment.

On November 25, Prokofiev and Petelin’s spacewalk was canceled due to a problem with one of the diving suits.

In mid-August, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemiev also returned to the ISS early due to problems with his diving suit during an extravehicular activity.

With information from EFE and AFP