An uncrewed Russian Soyuz capsule took off early Friday from Kazakhstan for the International Space Station to ultimately bring house 3 astronauts whose return car was damaged by a small meteoroid.The Soyuz MS-23 vessel took off successfully from the Russian-operated Baikonur Cosmodrome, live video broadcast by ISS partner NASA showed.Though the capsule is scheduled to dock with the ISS early Sunday Moscow time, it is not expected to bring house United States astronaut Frank Rubio and Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergei Prokopyev till September.The three came to the ISS last September aboard MS-22, and were initially just supposed to remain about 6 months, up until completion of March.But their pill began dripping coolant on Dec.
14-- soon prior to Russian cosmonauts were to start a spacewalk-- after being hit by what United States and Russian space authorities believe was a tiny space rock.MS-23 was at first set up to launch in mid-March with 2 cosmonauts and an astronaut on board who would ultimately take over for Rubio, Petelin and Prokopyev.Without replacements however, the three will now spend nearly a year on the ISS.After delivering people to the ISS, pills remain connected to the orbiting research study laboratory throughout the duration of missions, in case of any emergencies and to transport the crew home.The damage caused by the believed tiny meteoroid to the MS-22s cooling system raised fears that there might be problems during reentry, when the capsule experiences extreme temperatures.A comparable leakage in mid-February also impacted the Russian Progress MS-21 cargo ship, which had been docked to the ISS considering that October.That uncrewed ship left the space station last week.In addition to the 3 team awaiting the arrival of MS-23, there are also four others currently on the ISS, who got here on a SpaceX Dragon pill last October as part of the Crew-5 mission.They are arranged to be signed up with next week by members of the Crew-6 objective-- two Americans, an Emirati and a Russian-- who will likewise arrive aboard a SpaceX capsule expected to launch Monday from Florida.After a few days of overlap, Crew-5 will then go back to Earth.Space has remained a rare location of cooperation in between Moscow and Washington given that the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine and ensuing Western sanctions on Russia.The ISS was released in 1998 at a time of increased United States -Russia cooperation following the Cold War Space Race.
Russia has been utilizing the aging but trusted Soyuz capsules to ferry astronauts into space given that the 1960s.