Russia launches rescue ship to space station after leaks

Russia launched a rescue ship on Friday for two NASA cosmonauts and an astronaut whose home leaked dangerously while parked on the International Space Station.

The new, empty Soyuz capsule should arrive at the orbiting lab on Sunday.

The leak of the capsule in December was blamed on a micrometeorite that punctured the external radiator, draining the coolant. The same thing appears to have happened again earlier this month, this time on a Russian cargo ship. The camera view shows a small hole in each spacecraft.

The Russian space agency has delayed the launch of a replacement Soyuz, looking for a manufacturing defect. No problems were found, and the agency proceeded with the launch of the predawn capsule from Kazakhstan with a package of supplies attached to three seats.

Due to the urgent need for this capsule, two top NASA officials traveled from the US to observe the launch. To everyone’s relief, the capsule safely reached orbit nine minutes after launch — “a perfect ride to orbit,” said Rob Navias of NASA Mission Control from Houston.

Is the damaged ship no longer safe

Officials have determined it is too dangerous to bring NASA’s Frank Rubio and Russia’s Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin back to the damaged Soyuz next month as planned. With no coolant, the cabin temperature would rise during the return trip to Earth, potentially damaging computers and other equipment, and exposing the crew to overheating.

Until the new Soyuz goes up, emergency plans call for Rubio to switch to a SpaceX crew capsule attached to the space station. Prokopyev and Petelin remained assigned to the damaged Soyuz because they did not need a quick vacation. Having one less person on board would keep the temperature down to manageable levels, Russian engineers concluded.

The damaged Soyuz will return to Earth empty-handed at the end of March, so engineers can inspect it.

The three men launched in the Soyuz last September on a six-month mission. Now they will remain in space for a year, until the new capsule is ready for the replacement crew to be launched in September. It’s a Soyuz that just launched without a person on board.

The wrecked supply ship was loaded with junk and cut up over the weekend, burning up in the atmosphere as planned.

“The Russians continue to take a close look” at the spacecraft leak, NASA space station deputy program manager Dana Weigel told reporters earlier this week. “They look at everything … to try to understand.”

NASA had a new crew of four launch atop a SpaceX rocket early Monday morning from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX’s William Gerstenmaier said the four astronauts returning to Earth in a few weeks had inspected the Dragon capsule that would take them home and “everything checked out fine.”