MS-23, the Soyuz spacecraft that Russia sent to bring cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio back to Earth, has arrived at the International Space Station. By , Russia’s Roscosmos Space Agency announced Sunday morning that the unmanned spacecraft docked with the ISS at 7:58 p.m. ET on Saturday night. , the flight was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on February 24.
MS-23 was originally scheduled to launch later this year, but Roscosmos was forced to speed up the flight after MS-22, the original return craft of Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio, in December following a micrometeorite impact. The incident put Roscosmos and NASA in a difficult situation. If an emergency broke out on the ISS and the entire crew had to evacuate, it was unclear whether MS-22 would be able to get its crew back to Earth safely. Roscosmos and NASA eventually settled on a contingency plan that would have seen MS-22 carry Prokopyev and Petelin, while Rubio would have traveled on the SpaceX Crew-5 Dragon. Fortunately, the two agencies were not forced to test that plan.
With MS-23 safely docked to the ISS, Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio will remain on the space station until at least September. The three were originally due to complete their mission in March. Meanwhile, Roscomos plans to bring MS-22 back to Earth sometime next month.
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