Russia to send ‘rescue’ spacecraft to ISS after leak

Russia is preparing a “rescue” mission after a coolant leak from a Soyuz capsule launched with the International Space Station. NASA said at a media briefing that Russia’s Roscosmos agency will send an empty Soyuz to the station on February 20 as a replacement for the damaged spacecraft. The vehicle was originally supposed to be launched in March.

The leaking capsule is expected to return to Earth unmanned sometime in March. It will still carry experiments and other cargo. Cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergey Prokopiev, as well as NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, will now stay in orbit a few months longer, instead of leaving in March as planned.

The affected vessel began spewing particles on December 14. The ISS team quickly noticed that an external cooling circuit of the radiator was to blame, and investigators later determined that a micrometeoroid had struck the radiator. Roscosmos soon decided that the Soyuz was too dangerous to be used for standard crew return. Temperatures would rise above 100F upon re-entry, threatening both occupants and computer equipment. Repair in space would be impractical because the procedure would be too difficult, according to Sergey Krikalev of the agency.

The ISS crew is still prepared to use the broken Soyuz for emergency evacuation. However, this is not ideal when three of the seven people on board the ISS will likely have to accept increased risks to return home. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule is also docked, but normally holds only four passengers. NASA’s ISS program manager Joel Montalbano said at the briefing that there have been talks with SpaceX to see if one of the Soyuz passengers could travel aboard the Crew Dragon if needed.

Relations between NASA and Roscomos have been strained since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia said last summer that it would leave the ISS after 2024 to work on its own space station, and the US is preparing for a possible Russian withdrawal from 2021. However, the capsule leak effectively forced the two to work closely together – if only for a short time.