Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Next month Russia will launch a rescue ship to the International Space Station (ISS) to bring back to life three crew members trapped in orbit after the original capsule was hit by a meteor.
Reported The GuardianOn Wednesday (1/11/2023), Soyuz MS-22 suffered a major leak last month, spraying radiator coolant into space and prompting a pair of cosmonauts to abort a planned spacewalk.
Although Russian space agency Roscosmos said the attack posed no immediate threat to the space station crew, it did raise concerns that everyone on the outpost could return to Earth in an emergency situation.
With the leak leading to higher cabin temperatures, MS-22 was deemed unsuitable and only one operational escape pod remained docked on the ISS, namely the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. There are seven people on the space station, but the SpaceX capsule only seats four.
With these considerations in mind, Roscosmos has decided to bring forward the launch of Soyuz MS-23, originally scheduled for March, until February 20, so that it can be used to carry Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin to Earth and the US astronaut Francisco Rubio.
If a “very critical” situation had arisen on the ISS in the previous weeks, Roscosmos said, consideration would have been given to using the damaged Soyuz MS-22 to rescue the crew.
MS-23 was originally designed to carry a crew of three, but will be vacated as a rescue vessel. Roscosmos head Yuri Borisov did not say when Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio would return to Earth with Soyuz reserves.
The damaged MS-22 will return unmanned as soon as its replacement arrives, Roscosmos added.
Micrometeoroids, naturally occurring chunks of rock or metal that can be as small as grains of sand, pose a significant risk to human spaceflight. They zip around the Earth at about 17,000 mph (27,400 km/h), much faster than the speed of a bullet.
Roscosmos said the diameter of the micrometeoroid that hit the Soyuz was tiny, leaving the hole in the capsule just 1mm in diameter. However, it did cause significant damage, with NASA TV images showing snowflake-like white particles pouring from behind.
Artificial “space junk” can also damage equipment. In 2021, Russia blew up one of its own satellites in a missile test creating an expanding cloud of shrapnel.
Meanwhile, space remains a rare area of cooperation between Moscow and Washington since Russia invaded Ukraine.
The ISS was launched in stages starting in 1998, at a time when US-Russian cooperation was ramping up nearly a decade after the end of the Cold War. The old space station is set to be “deorbited” in 2031, with plans for a descent to a remote point in the Pacific.
Meanwhile, a new space race between the US and China is heating up. In 2021, the Beijing space program will establish the first manned space station to orbit the Earth. The 70-ton Tiangong, which means “heavenly palace”, is expected to operate for at least 10 years.
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