MOSCOW, February 22. /TASS/. The damaged Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft will descend to Earth in crewless mode under a shortened scheme, Roscosmos Executive Director for Human Spaceflights Sergey Krikalyov said on Wednesday.
"We will carry out its descent under a shortened program and will also try to get as much readings as possible from this spacecraft during its flight back to the ground in crewless mode," he said.
The spacecraft will experience higher thermal regimes during its descent. Roscosmos specialists will monitor its systems and temperature modes, Krikalyov said.
"The descent in such an emergency mode means new information and new trials," he added.
The Soyuz MS-22 spaceship will be ready for its return to Earth as soon as all the work for transferring the seats and spacesuits to the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft is over and the latter turns into "a real lifeboat," he said.
The incident with the damaged Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft affected the next two space launches, the Roscosmos official said.
"This emergency affected the next two launches. That is why, the entire program that exists will be rescheduled for six months. All that we planned for spring will be shifted to the fall and the events planned for the fall will be rescheduled for the next year," Krikalyov said.
Such instances when a flight program has to be altered occur rarely but there is nothing extraordinary in that, he added.
"There were instances in orbit when the spaceflights of crews were extended for technical or organizational reasons. We believe that in this case the crew’s flight will also be extended for a certain period. As for the scope of this extension, we will now look into how we can optimize the program and will see the next spacecraft’s readiness for launch," he explained.
There is little chance that a micrometeoroid can hit the International Space Station (ISS), Krikalyov said.
"This is, indeed, a hardly probable event because this micrometeoroid hit not just the spacecraft and its radiator but a tube on that radiator," the Roscosmos official explained.
The remotely controlled manipulator arm from the ISS American segment helped investigate the causes of the incident with the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, he said.
"The examination confirmed that this hardly probable event occurred. The Americans moved their manipulator arm and positioned it in a way to inspect the place and this probe helped us get convinced that this was a hole made by a micrometeoroid," Krikalyov said.
On December 15, 2022, the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked to the orbital outpost experienced a coolant leak on its external radiator. After analyzing the situation, Russia’s state commission made a decision to bring the damaged Soyuz spacecraft back to Earth in crewless mode and return Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio whose mission has been prolonged for several months aboard the Soyuz MS-23 spaceship.
Russian space industry specialists have carried out special investigations to find out that the Soyuz MS-22 was damaged by a sporadic micrometeoroid.
ISS Russian Segment Flight Operations Director, Chief Designer for Russia’s Piloted Systems Vladimir Solovyov said in a live broadcast on the Rossiya-24 TV channel on February 20 that there were plans to return the damaged Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft to Earth in late March.