NASA plans to enlist the help of Elon Musk’s space company, SpaceX, to bring two cosmonauts and an astronaut back to Earth, following a recent leak in a Soyuz spacecraft attached to the International Space Station.
The Russian MS-22 Soyuz capsule, now docked with the ISS, began spraying coolant droplets into space on December 14. This coolant was supposed to control the internal temperature of the chamber, and reportedly this vital fluid in the capsule is now completely empty.
The hours-long leak disrupted station operations and forced station cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin to abandon a spacewalk scheduled for that day. Russia’s space agency Roscosmos speculates that the leak may have been caused by a small micrometeoroid piercing the capsule.
Authorities are still assessing the situation and will decide in March whether the Soyuz rover can safely return Prokopyev and Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio to Earth. The capsule, whose refrigerant system fails, may be unsafe for humans as it re-enters our atmosphere.
NASA is also considering how to save the crew if they are stranded on the ISS without a vehicle. NASA spokesperson Sandra Jones said residents of the station can use a SpaceX Dragon capsule. “We asked SpaceX a few questions about their ability to bring in crew members if needed,” Jones said in a conversation with Reuters.
Whether a spare Dragon capsule will fly to the ISS to retrieve 2 cosmonauts and 1 astronaut, or a SpaceX transporting NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata to the orbiting science lab in October. It is not yet clear whether they are intended to return in the capsule.
There is also an important problem: All astronauts traveling in the Dragon spacecraft are required to wear custom-made SpaceX spacesuits, and the crew arriving on the Soyuz space station do not have these suits.
NASA previously said in a statement, “The systems tested were nominal and Roscosmos evaluations of additional Soyuz systems are ongoing. “The temperatures and humidity inside the Soyuz spacecraft, which remains attached to the Rassvet module, are within acceptable limits.”
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