Three crewmembers of the International Space Station (ISS) will have to wait a little longer for their ride home. Russia’s Roscosmos has announced a delay in the launch of the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft, which is slated to replace the MS-22 that sprung a coolant leak late last year. There’s nothing wrong with MS-23 — as far as anyone knows. But a new coolant leak on Russia’s Progress 82 freighter has raised questions about the root cause of the MS-22 leak. The new investigation means at least a few more weeks of waiting.
The space agencies operating the ISS have always kept at least one crew-rated spacecraft docked at the station as a lifeboat. If the station is ever in danger, the crew can shelter in this spacecraft to prepare for an emergency return to Earth. Luckily, that has never been necessary. The MS-22 capsule transported Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin, and US astronaut Francisco Rubio to the ISS in mid-2022, and the plan was to use the spacecraft for the return trip. However, the vessel’s cooling system failed in December, rendering it unsuitable for crew transport.
Initially, Russia’s investigation pointed to a micrometeoroid strike. That’s a rare but not unthinkable event in space, so Roscosmos continued with its plan to accelerate the launch of MS-23. However, Russia’s Progress 82 freighter suffered an almost identical leak over the weekend in which it lost all coolant from the external radiator in a few hours. Roscosmos has now halted plans to launch MS-23 this month while it investigates.
Cosmonaut Anna Kikina used the robotic Canadarm2 to capture this image of Soyuz MS-22 after the leak. Image: NASA
The odds of a second micrometeoroid hitting Progress 82 are astronomical, which has raised concerns that the MS-22 leak may have been the result of a manufacturing flaw — the Progress cargo vessels are based on the crewed Soyuz design, and that could put MS-23 at risk of the same type of failure. The crew rotation schedule has already been extended by the MS-22 leak. MS-23 will be sent up sans crew, giving the station the necessary complement of lifeboats. A replacement crew won’t arrive to relieve Prokopyev, Petelin, and Rubio until the middle of 2023, assuming no additional delays. Sending up another defective spacecraft to set things right could leave those three crewmembers stuck on the ISS for months.
Russia’s ongoing hardware issues are in stark contrast to NASA’s current ISS operations with the SpaceX Crew Dragon. NASA plans to launch SpaceX Crew-6 later this month. Following that, Crew-5 will depart from the ISS to return NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, as well as JAXA’s Koichi Wakata, to Earth. NASA has also talked to SpaceX about a backup plan to use the Crew Dragon to evacuate all seven crewmembers in an emergency. Meanwhile, Roscosmos claims it should be possible to complete the investigation and launch MS-23 by the first few weeks of March.
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