The year 2022 was closed with disturbing news: there is a group of Russian astronauts stranded on the International Space Station and there is no concrete plan to rescue them.
It was in September 2022 when the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, launched its new space mission rocket “Soyuz MS-22″. All under the pressure and context of absolute crisis of space collaboration due to the invasion of Ukraine by the government of Vladimir Putin.
In the end, the mission project became a reality and the crew was able to take off aboard the rocket launched from Kazakhstan to go to their final destination: the international space station (ISS).
Everything was going in apparent order, but towards the end of the year it was made public that it had actually been detected. a serious flaw due to a refrigerant leak in the coupled module of the “Soyuz MS-22″.
Because of this, the entire original mission plan has been altered to enter a delicate scenario where the Russian ship cannot detach itself from the ISS and the astronauts have no way to return to Earth.
A latent tragedy with astronauts where SpaceX could come to the rescue
The refrigerant leak was mainly due to the impact of a micro meteorite, which caused damage to the external casing of the service module.
This situation had gone relatively unnoticed, but on December 14 Russian astronauts were preparing for a spacewalk when the alert system went off.
The pre-departure routine outside of ISS helped to detect a serious drop in cooling system pressure. There are, in fact, a series of images disseminated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, for its acronym in English) where a jet of white particles is observed escaping into space.
Such a scenario has left everyone, including the ISS crew, stranded in space. Since undocking the Russian module could jeopardize the complete integrity of the station.
As reported Space Policy Onlineit will be until this month of January 2023 that the authorities will make the final decisions on how to solve everything.
The strongest possibility he is evaluating so far is to ask for help from Elon Musk’s space company, SpaceXso they use one of their “Crew Dragon” ships to rescue the crew and bring them back to Earth.
“We have asked SpaceX a few questions about their ability to bring in additional crew on their Dragon ship if necessary, but that is not our primary focus at this time.” a NASA spokesman said.
Currently, the Space Station is the crew of the Russian mission: Sergei Prokopiev, Dmitry Petelin and the Latin American astronaut Frank Rubio.
Plus the original ISS team: the Russian Anna Kikinathe americans Nicole Mann y josh cassada and the japanese Koichi Wakata.