12.01.2023

A Soyuz spacecraft that suffered a coolant leak Dec. 14 will be replaced by a new Soyuz spacecraft that will launch without a crew Feb. 20, extending the stay of three current ISS crew members. Credit: NASA TV

SEATTLE — Russia will launch a Soyuz spacecraft without a crew to the International Space Station in February after concluding a damaged Soyuz spacecraft docked there cannot safely return its crew to Earth.

In a statement Jan. 11, the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced that the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft will launch to the ISS without a crew Feb. 20. It will replace the Soyuz MS-22 currently docked at the station, which will return to Earth uncrewed.

Soyuz MS-22 suffered a coolant leak Dec. 14 as Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin were preparing for a spacewalk. The spacewalk was called off as coolant spewed from the leak for hours.

During a call with reporters, NASA and Roscosmos officials said that a Russian state commission concluded that, because of the lost coolant, the spacecraft’s radiator could no longer cool the spacecraft on its own. During the spacecraft’s return to Earth, temperatures inside the spacecraft could rise to more than 40 degrees Celsius with high humidity, said Sergei Krikalev, executive director of human spaceflight programs at Roscosmos.

“The main problem to land the current Soyuz with a crew would be the thermal condition because we lost heat rejection capability,” he said. “The crew may overheat with high temperature and high humidity.”

Under the revised plan, Soyuz MS-23 will launch Feb. 20 without a crew but with some cargo. After docking with the station, the crew will spend one to two weeks transferring equipment, like customized seat liners, from Soyuz MS-22 to MS-23, while placing in Soyuz MS-22 other cargo that can be returned to Earth that is not sensitive to overheating. Soyuz MS-22 will then undock and attempt a landing back in Kazakhstan in automated mode.

Soyuz MS-23 was previously scheduled to launch in March to send Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara to the station. Under the new plan, Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio will remain on the ISS until later this year.

Krikalev said it was premature to estimate how long their stay on the ISS will be extended beyond “several” months. “What will be the exact date we will send replacements for them is not decided yet,” he said, and noted later that no future missions had been canceled, only delayed.

Joel Montalbano, NASA ISS program manager, said that NASA will review its schedule of upcoming missions, including the Crew-6 Crew Dragon mission scheduled to launch in February, in light of the change in Russian plans. He said it would be a “couple of weeks” before the agency decided how that schedule might change, but added there would be no changes to the crew for Crew-6.

Krikalev and Montalbano said they are looking at options of what to do if an emergency required an evacuation of the ISS before Soyuz MS-23 arrived. That could include flying one or more Soyuz crewmembers on the Crew Dragon spacecraft docked to the ISS in place of cargo. The rest could return on Soyuz MS-22, with less of a risk of overheating because of the recued crew size.

“SpaceX has been extremely responsive to this request,” Montalbano said of studies on accommodating additional personnel on the Crew Dragon. “All this is only for an emergency, only if we have to evacuate ISS. That’s not the nominal plan.”

Krikalev said an investigation concluded that the hole in the radiator was most likely caused by a tiny micrometeoroid hitting the spacecraft at about seven kilometers per second. Ground tests confirmed that hypothesis, he said, adding that it was unlikely to be an orbital debris impact because of the high relative speed of the impact meant that the object would have been traveling too fast to be in a stable orbit.

Montalbano agreed. “Everything does point to a micrometeoroid impact,” he said, although an impact linked to the Geminid meteor shower was ruled out based on the location of the impact versus the director of the shower. “Nothing was off-nominal in the manufacturing of the vehicle.”

Krikalev said that while a design flaw does not appear to be the cause of the hole, technicians “double-checked, triple-checked” the radiator on Soyuz MS-23 as a precaution. “We don’t have any issues with the next Soyuz.”

Engineers also ruled out attempting to repair Soyuz MS-22 in orbit. Krikalev said the Soyuz was not in a location that spacewalking cosmonauts could easily reach, and that attempting to refill the radiator with coolant and fixing the hole would be difficult and risky for spacewalkers. “There’s much less risk to just replace the vehicle.”

Krikalev and Montalbano said that they have been in regular contact with the ISS crew to inform them about the status and outcome of the investigation, and that Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio were all in good health and able to handle and extended stay. “I may have to fly some more ice cream to reward them,” Montalbano said.

Quelle: SN

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Russia to launch replacement for damaged Soyuz crew ship at space station

Russian space agency and NASA officials said Wednesday they will accelerate the launch of the next Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station, and fly it to the complex next month without anyone on-board to replace a Soyuz crew ferry ship damaged Dec. 14 by a high-speed impact, likely from a tiny particle from deep space.

The schedule shuffle will mean NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin will remain on the space station several months beyond their planned return to Earth in late March, officials said.

The three-man Soyuz crew make up part of the Expedition 68 crew on the space station, alongside a crew of four that arrived in October on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft as part of regularly-scheduled crew rotations flown on Russian and U.S. ferry ships.

“We’re not calling it a rescue Soyuz,” said Joel Montalbano, NASA’s space station program manager, in a conference call with reporters Wednesday. “Right now, the crew is safe on-board the space station. I’m calling it a replacement Soyuz. This is the next Soyuz that was scheduled to fly in March. It will just fly a little earlier.”

Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, said engineers have “experimentally proven” that a radiator pipe on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft was damaged by an impact Dec. 14, creating a hole smaller than 1 millimeter in the cooling loop. Coolant fluid leaked out through the hole over several hours, visible as a cloud of particles around the Soyuz spacecraft docked to the Rassvet module on the Russian section of the space station.

The leak started as Prokopyev and Petelin were preparing for a spacewalk outside the space station. Russian mission controllers delayed the spacewalk to focus on the problem with the Soyuz spacecraft, and officials launched an investigation into the cause and consequences of the leak.

Russia’s space agency said Wednesday that the launch of the next Soyuz spacecraft, Soyuz MS-23, will move up to Feb. 20 from the original target date of March 16. The Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft was supposed to launch with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara to begin a six-month expedition, replacing Prokopyev, Petelin, and Rubio, who were scheduled to return to Earth on their Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft March 28.

Under the new plan, the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft will launch without a crew, bumping Kononenko, Chub, and O’Hara to a later Soyuz flight. Prokopyev, Petelin, and Rubio will return to Earth on the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft later this year, following the launch of the next Soyuz crew on the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft.

“We will probably extend the stay of this crew, Expedition 68, on the station for an extra several months,” said Sergei Krikalev, executive director of human spaceflight programs at Roscosmos. “What will be the exact date to send replacements for them is not decided yet, but it’s going to be several months longer mission.”

The Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft is already at the launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where it will be connected with its Soyuz rocket ahead of liftoff next month.

Montalbano said ground teams informed the crew of the extension to their mission, which could last until September, the original schedule for the launch of the Soyuz MS-24 mission.

“The crews are prepared,” Montalbano said.”They’re prepared to stay until the September launch date if that’s the case. If they go earlier and that launch date moves up earlier, then they’re prepared to come home earlier … They are ready to go with whatever decision that we give them.”

Krikalev said medical teams have cleared Prokopyev, Petelin, and Rubio for a longer stay in space.

After the launch and docking of the new Soyuz MS-23 ferry ship next month, Russia’s space agency plans to transfer spacesuits, custom seat liners, and emergency equipment from the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft over to the replacement vehicle. Then the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft will depart the station some time in March without any crew and head for an automated landing in Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft launched Sept. 21 from Baikonur, carrying Prokopyev, Petelin, and Rubio to the space station for a planned half-year mission. Rubio flew on the Soyuz spacecraft under a new barter agreement between NASA and Roscosmos, which allows U.S. astronauts to continue flying to the station on Russian missions in exchange for the ability for Russian cosmonauts to fly on commercial SpaceX crew capsules under contract to NASA.

The no-funds-exchanged agreement is designed help ensure there is always at least one NASA astronaut and one Russian cosmonaut on the space station at all times, even if there are delays or groundings of Soyuz or SpaceX missions, to operate systems on the U.S. and Russian segments of the orbiting outpost.

Krikalev, a former Russian cosmonaut with flights on Russia’s Mir space station, the International Space Station, and NASA space shuttles, said investigators determined the hole in the Soyuz MS-22 coolant system was likely caused by an impact from a micrometeoroid, or a tiny rock fragment that came from deep space.

“We saw liquid going out from the radiator out to space,” Krikalev said. “Initially, we started to check if we may have some kind of technical or technological problem that could cause this kind of malfunction.”

But officials ruled out a technical problem as the cause for the leak after finding a hole in the radiator coolant pipe, located on the Soyuz spacecraft’s rear equipment module, during an inspection by the space station’s Canadian-built robotic arm. Russian engineers also performed an experiment with a high-velocity gun, firing a small particle at an aluminum plate representative of the Soyuz radiator coolant pipe.

“Our result from this test completely coincides with our calculation, so our current theory is that this was caused by a small particle about 1 millimeter in diameter and a velocity of about 7 kilometers per second,” Krikalev told reporters Wednesday.

According to Krikalev, Russian investigators concluded the hole on the Soyuz spacecraft was caused by a naturally-occurring meteoroid, and not a piece of human-made space junk, because of calculations about the velocity of the impact.

“We think that this is a meteoroid (and not a piece of space junk) because some other object on this orbit cannot exist,” Krikalev said. “Because it has such a high velocity, it wouldn’t stay on this orbit.

“That’s why we think it’s some kind of meteorite coming from a random direction,” he said.

Montalbano, NASA’s space station manager, agreed with Krikalev’s assessment, and added that information catalogued during the manufacturing Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft indicated there were no defects in the radiator system before launch.

“Everything points to micrometeoroid debris,” Montalbano said. “So far, we are in concurrence with Roscosmos.”

Krikalev said any attempt to repair the hole on the Soyuz radiator would be “so difficult and so risky” that it would be less risky to launch a replacement for the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft.

Without the cooling system, temperatures inside the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft could reach higher than 100 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) with a crew on-board, Krikalev said.

“That itself is not so high, but the problem is in a small volume, the humidity could be high, and the crew may overheat with high temperature and high humidity,” he said.

“The main problem on the current Soyuz with the crew would be the thermal condition because we lost heat rejection capability on the Soyuz,” Krikalev said. “In the case where we have crew inside and we have all equipment switched on, we may have a high temperature situation on the Soyuz equipment compartment and crew compartment.”

Russian officials believe is enough redundancy on the Soyuz spacecraft for the capsule to land safely, even if systems inside the spacecraft overheat.

“As for re-entry, we expect that maybe we will have some overheating of equipment,” Krikalev said. “Still, we think that Soyuz has several layers of redundancy. If the computer fails, we have capability to continue re-entry mode with analog equipment. So we have several layers of redundancy. So we think that Soyuz will return back safely.”

Until the new Soyuz spacecraft arrives next month, the Soyuz MS-22 vehicle remains the lifeboat for Prokopyev, Petelin, and Rubio to escape the space station if an emergency forces an evacuation of the complex. Besides the radiator, all other systems on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft remain healthy, including its control thrusters, Montalbano said.

In the unlikely event of an evacuation, NASA and Roscosmos are working with SpaceX to potentially accommodate at least one of the Soyuz MS-22 crew members on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft docked at the space station. SpaceX’s Dragon Endurance spacecraft delivered NASA astronauts Nicole Mann, Josh Cassada, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina to the station in October on the Crew-5 mission.

The Dragon capsule has four seats, all of which would be filled during an emergency evacuation of the space station. Montalbano said at least one extra crew member, and maybe more, could ride back to Earth on the Dragon spacecraft in an area normally used for cargo storage.

“If we had to evacuate, we will not have extra seats or suits for extra crew members coming home, that’s why you only want to do it in a contingency,” Montalbano said. “We have a plan using hardware from Soyuz to safely secure crew members in the area that the cargo normally returns on Dragon.”

Krikalev said potential overheating on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft during an emergency evacuation could be reduced if it returned to Earth with just one or two crew members, instead of the full complement of three people.

“That’s why we are looking at options that, if we need to use Soyuz in case of emergency, we may reduce the size of the crew in order to reduce the heat load on the crew for landing conditions,” he said.

SpaceX’s Crew-5 mission is scheduled to return to Earth this spring, following the launch of their replacements on SpaceX’s Crew-6 mission. The launch from Florida of the Crew-6 mission, with four crew members from the United States, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates, was scheduled for Feb. 19 but will likely be delayed at least a couple of weeks until after the launch and docking of the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft to replace the damaged Soyuz MS-22 vehicle.

Montalbano said space station managers will also re-evaluate schedules for other missions launching to the orbiting complex over the next few months, including resupply missions by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman, a long-delayed crew test flight on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, and a commercial astronaut mission for Axiom Space on a SpaceX crew capsule.

Quelle: SN