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Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft taken to the orbit — TASS correspondent

The spacecraft will travel to the International Space Station on a two-day basis

KOROLEV /Moscow Region/, February 24. /TASS/. The Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft, launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on Friday, was taken to the orbit, a TASS correspondent reported from the Mission Control Center.

The spacecraft’s journey to the International Space Station (ISS) will be carried out under the two-day scheme. Its docking with the Poisk module of the Russian segment of the ISS is scheduled for 04:01 a.m. Moscow time on February 26.

The spacecraft was launched atop the Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan at 03:24 a.m. Moscow time on February 24.

There will be no cosmonauts aboard the Soyuz MS-23, but it will deliver 429 kg of cargo to the ISS for the crew. The supplies will include medical control and examination means, station cleaning and atmosphere management tools, air revitalization and water supply equipment and apparatus for scientific experiments

Vladimir Soloviev, the general designer for manned systems at Russia’s Rocket and Space Corporation (RSC) Energia and the flight director of the Russian segment of the ISS, said on Monday that the spaceship will deliver three times as much food as usual.

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 spacecraft. Initially, it was planned to send Soyuz MS-23 to space in mid-March, to take the next ISS mission to the orbital outpost. Russian space industry specialists have carried out special investigations to find out that the Soyuz MS-22 was damaged by a sporadic micrometeoroid.

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