A Russian rescue ship takes off for the ISS to bring back two cosmonauts and an astronaut stranded due to a breakdown

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft took off on the night of Thursday February 23 to Friday February 24 from Kazakhstan in the direction of the International Space Station. The objective is to bring back to Earth in September two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut whose initial ship was damaged, after suffering a spectacular leak, due according to Moscow to the impact of a micrometeorite.

The MS-23 rescue craft took off, with no one on board, from the Baikonur cosmodrome, according to live video broadcasts from Russia’s Roscosmos space agency and NASA. Liftoff and orbiting of the spacecraft “unfolded normally”, Roscosmos announced in a statement. Docking with the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled for February 26.

A mission extended until September

Initially, the takeoff of this device was scheduled for mid-March and it was to transport a new crew of three people to the space station. The ship finally left empty in order to be able to bring back the three passengers stranded on board the ISS: the American Frank Rubio as well as the Russians Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitri Peteline.

In the absence of a new crew, the mission was extended until September, when the three astronauts were originally due to return at the end of March. They will therefore spend a total of about a year in space, instead of six months. However, they won’t be the first to stay that long on board the ISS, as that duration was matched just last year.

The vessels aboard which astronauts and cosmonauts arrive on the ISS remain docked to the station throughout their stay, in order to be able to serve as a backup vehicle in the event of an emergency evacuation being necessary. They also leave on board the same craft. But in December, the Soyuz MS-22 suffered a serious coolant leak. The Russian space agency therefore decided that it could only be used in an emergency, and chose to send the MS-23 spacecraft as a replacement. The damaged MS-22 ship must be undocked from the ISS and return to Earth empty, a priori at the end of next month.