Crew of damaged Soyuz MS-22 to return to Earth on board another spacecraft in September - Roscosmos

MOSCOW. Feb 21 (Interfax) - The Russian-American crew of the damaged Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft will be able to return to Earth on board the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft in September 2023, Roscosmos said.

"Sergei Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin, and Francisco Rubio were supposed originally to land on board the Soyuz MS-22 on March 28, 2023. Now it's planned that they'll do it on board the Soyuz MS-23 in September 2023," it said.

The Soyuz-2.1a launch vehicle carrying the unmanned Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft to replace the damaged Soyuz MS-22 should be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) at 3:24 a.m. Moscow Time on February 24, it said.

On February 18, Roscosmos said that its specialists did not detect any defects in the Soyuz MS-23's radiator.

Roscosmos said on December 15, 2022 that Russian cosmonauts had cancelled a spacewalk from the ISS after discovering a leak in the outer loop of the MS-22's radiator.

On January 11, Roscosmos head Yury Borisov said that an analysis confirmed that the spacecraft was damaged by a micrometeorite. A piece of space debris is deemed responsible for the 1mm hole in the skin of the instrument module. The damaged Soyuz MS-22 is supposed to land unmanned.