New York/Moscow, Feb. 26, (dpa/GNA) - An unmanned Soyuz capsule has docked with the International Space Station (ISS) as a replacement for a damaged space shuttle at the station.
After launching from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, the Soyuz MS-23 arrived at the space station on Sunday, live images from the US space agency NASA showed.
The capsule was carrying about 430 kilograms of material for the crew, including medical devices and equipment for scientific experiments.
The unusual mission had become necessary because the MS-22 shuttle, which had previously docked with the ISS, sprung a leak – probably caused by a micrometeorite.
The leaking liquid from the cooling system made the return of two Russians and a US astronaut to Earth risky.
The plan now is for cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, who arrived at the ISS in September on the MS-22, to return to Earth on the MS-23, probably in the autumn. The damaged MS-22 capsule, in turn, could fly back from the ISS unmanned in the meantime.
Although Russia and the United States have been working closely together on the space station some 400 kilometres above the Earth for more than 20 years, the relationship has been in a serious crisis since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine about a year ago.
The two countries continue to cooperate in space, but here too certain tensions have arisen – triggered by the Ukraine conflict.
GNA