MS-23, the Soyuz spacecraft Russia despatched to convey cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio again to Earth, has arrived on the Worldwide House Station. Per , Russia’s Roscosmos House Company introduced early Sunday morning that the unmanned vessel docked with the ISS at 7:58PM ET on Saturday night. , the flight launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on February twenty fourth.
MS-23 was initially scheduled to launch later this yr, however Roscosmos was pressured to push up the flight after MS-22 – Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio’s authentic return craft – in December following a micrometeoroid strike. The incident put Roscosmos and NASA in a tough spot. If an emergency broke out on the ISS and your entire crew needed to evacuate, it wasn’t clear whether or not MS-22 might carry its crew safely again to Earth. Roscosmos and NASA finally settled on a contingency plan that will have seen MS-22 transport Prokopyev and Petelin, whereas Rubio would have hitched a trip on the SpaceX Crew-5 Dragon. Fortunately, the 2 companies weren’t pressured to place that plan to the take a look at.
With MS-23 safely docked with the ISS, Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio will stay on the area station till not less than September. The three have been initially on account of full their mission in March. Within the meantime, Roscomos plans to convey MS-22 again to Earth someday subsequent month.
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