RNS: Russia will launch a rescue vessel to the International Space Station (ISS) in February this year to bring home three crew members who have been trapped in orbit since their original capsule was hit by a meteoroid.
Last month, the docked Soyuz MS-22 sprung a major leak, spraying radiator coolant into space and forcing a pair of cosmonauts to cancel a planned spacewalk. The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, stated that the strike posed no immediate threat to the space station’s crew.
The Roscosmos said, it has decided to bring forward a planned March launch of the Soyuz MS-23 to 20 February so it can be used to transport the Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and the US astronaut Francisco Rubio back to Earth.
Space has remained a rare area in which Moscow and Washington have continued cooperation despite the Russian special military operations in Ukraine and consequent Western sanctions on Russia.
