NASA studies a SpaceX backup plan for the crew of the leaky Russian Soyuz spacecraft

NASA is studying whether the spacecraft Crew Dragon from SpaceX may offer an alternate trip home for some International Space Station crew members after a Russian capsule suffered a coolant leak while docked to the orbiting laboratory.

NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos They are investigating the cause of a coolant pipe break in an external radiator of the Russian ship Soyuz MS-22which is due to return its crew of two cosmonauts and one American astronaut to Earth early next year.

But the December 14 leak, which drained the Soyuz of a vital fluid used to regulate the temperature of the crew cabin, has derailed Russia’s routines on the space station, and Moscow engineers are considering whether to launch another Soyuz to recover the three-man team that flew to the ISS aboard the disabled MS-22 spacecraft.

If Russia can’t launch another Soyuz spacecraft, or decides for some reason that doing so would be too risky, NASA is considering another option.

“We have asked SpaceX some questions about its ability to return additional crew members to Dragon if necessary, but that is not our primary goal at this time,” NASA spokeswoman Sandra Jones told Reuters.

SpaceX did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

It’s unclear what NASA asked about the capabilities of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, whether the company can find a way to increase the capacity of the Dragon crew currently docked to the station or launch an empty capsule for the rescue of crew.

But the company’s possible involvement in a Russian-led mission underscores the degree of precaution NASA is taking to ensure that its astronauts can return to Earth safely, should one of the other organized contingency plans fail. by Moscow.

The leaking Soyuz capsule carried American astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dimitri Petelin to the space station in September for a six-month mission. His return to Earth was scheduled for March 2023.

The station’s four other crew members – two more from NASA, a third Russian cosmonaut and a Japanese astronaut – arrived in October in a NASA-contracted SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which also remains stationed on the ISS.

SpaceX’s teardrop-shaped, four-seat astronaut capsule has become the centerpiece of NASA’s crewed spaceflight in low-Earth orbit. Apart from the Russian Soyuz program, it is the only entity capable of transporting human beings to the space station and vice versa.

Investigate causes of the leak

Finding out the cause of the escape could influence decisions about the best way to return the crew. NASA and Roscosmos are investigating three possible causes of the leak: a puncture caused by a meteroid, the impact of a piece of space debris or a hardware failure in the Soyuz capsule itself.

And hardware malfunction could pose additional questions for Roscosmos about the integrity of other Soyuz vehicles, such as the one it could send to rescue the crew, said Mike Suffredini, who led NASA’s ISS program for a decade until 2015.

“I can assure you that this is something that they are looking at, to see what is behind it and if there is a concern about it,” he said. “The thing about the Russians is that they are very good at not talking about what they do, but they are very thorough.”

Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov had previously said engineers would decide how to get the crew back to Earth before Tuesday, but the agency said that day it would make the decision in January.

NASA has previously said that the capsule’s temperatures remain “within acceptable limits,” and that its crew compartment is currently being ventilated with airflow allowed through an open hatch to the ISS.

Sergei Krikalev, Russia’s head of manned space programs, told reporters last week that temperatures would rise rapidly if the access hatch to the station were closed.

According to Jones, NASA and Roscosmos are primarily focusing on determining the cause of the leak, as well as the health of MS-22, which is also intended to serve as a lifeboat for the three-man crew in the event of an emergency. at the station require evacuation.

Initially, a recent meteor shower seemed to increase the odds that a micrometeoroid was the culprit, but the leak was pointing in the wrong direction for that to be the case, Joel Montalbano, NASA’s ISS program manager, told reporters last week, although a space rock could have come from another direction.

And if it’s your fault a piece of space junk, could fuel concerns about an increasingly dirty orbital environment and raise questions about whether equipment as vital as the spacecraft’s cooling line should have been protected by a debris shield, as other parts of the MS-22 spacecraft are. . “We’re not protected against everything around us,” Montalbano said.

“We’re not protected against everything on the space station,” Suffredini said. “We can’t shield ourselves against everything.”