Russia will send a new capsule next month to bring back three space station crew members whose original trip home was damaged, officials said Wednesday.
The two Russians and one American will remain a few extra months on the International Space Station as a result of the capsule change, potentially extending their mission by nearly a year, NASA and Russian space officials told reporters .
Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin and astronaut Frank Rubio were due to return in March in the same Soyuz capsule that took them last September. But that capsule was struck by a tiny meteoroid on December 14, creating a small hole in the outer radiator and sending coolant into space.
Sergei Krikalev, head of human spaceflight at the Russian Space Agency, said that barring an emergency on the space station, it would be too dangerous for the crew to use this capsule to return to Earth.
Although Russian engineers believe the capsule could survive reentry and land safely, the temperature in the cabin could reach 40 degrees Celsius (Celsius) with high humidity because it cannot dissipate the heat generated by a computer and other electronics, noted Krikalev, a former cosmonaut.
The new Soyuz capsule will launch from Kazakhstan on February 20, a month ahead of schedule. No one will be on board. The capsule will fly in automatic mode, the head of the Russian Space Agency, Yuri Borisov, announced that same day.
The original plan was to launch this new Soyuz in March with two Russians and one American, replacing the three already up there. This new crew will now have to wait until late summer or fall to fly when another capsule is ready for them.
Russia will eventually return the damaged capsule with only science samples on board.
“Right now, the crew is safe aboard the space station,” said NASA’s space station program manager, Joel Montalbano. “There is no immediate need for the crew to return home today.”
According to Montalbano and Krikalev, safety plans are in the works, in case an emergency forces the space station’s seven residents to flee before the new Soyuz can be launched, such as a fire or decompression. NASA is studying the possibility of adding additional crew to the SpaceX capsule currently docked at the station.
Borisov said the analysis confirmed the leak was caused by a micrometeoroid, and not a piece of spacecraft debris or a manufacturing defect. The resulting hole was about 1 millimeter or less than one-tenth of an inch in size.
In addition to Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio, the space station is home to NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada; Russian Anna Kikina and Japanese Koichi Wakata. The four went up in a SpaceX capsule last October.
(With AP entry)
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