A little while ago, the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft landed in Kazakhstan after departing the International Space Station almost two hours earlier. Generally, the staff arrives shortly after to assist the crew who have just returned from the Station but in this case, there’s no one on board due to the problems encountered in December 2022 with the cooling system, which made the journey unsafe for the humans.
The difficult story of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft mission began on September 21, 2022, with the launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with three new crew members on board who reached the International Space Station after just over three hours: astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin. They were scheduled to return to Earth in the same spacecraft but on December 15 from the Station a stream of “flakes” which later turned out to be coolant was seen coming from the Soyuz MS-22 revealing the problem that forced the Russian space agency Roscosmos to upset that plan.
An inspection of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft revealed a hole in a radiator of the cooling system, leading to the conclusion that the liquid leak was caused by the impact of a micro-meteorite. In February 2023, a similar problem was found in the Russian Progress MS-21 space freighter. The strange coincidence called into question the conclusions about the causes of the leaks and showed the need for further investigations.
The damage to the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft required a serious evaluation of the possibilities of using it to bring its crew back to Earth. Roscosmos’ conclusion was that there were no longer the safety requirements for transporting humans due to the temperatures that could be reached inside during the journey. Eventually, Roscosmos sent the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft to the International Space Station on an automated journey to replace the damaged one, extending the mission of Frank Rubio, Sergey Prokopyev, and Dmitri Petelin by six more months.
The return to Earth of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft gives Roscosmos the opportunity to conduct deeper investigations of the onboard systems and onboard conditions with the malfunctioning cooling system. In the event of an emergency evacuation, prior to the arrival of Soyuz MS-23, the Russian cosmonauts were expected to use it while astronaut Frank Rubio would travel on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endurance. This would have reduced the heat generated inside Soyuz MS-22. Thankfully, there was no need to test conditions on board in an emergency and now the capsule has landed normally, even if uncrewed.
