Area station actions move in advance amid Soyuz shuffle – SpaceNews
WASHINGTON — It is mainly small business as common on the International Room Station as NASA adapts its recent functions and long term plans to Russia’s conclusion to swap a weakened Soyuz spacecraft docked there.
NASA astronaut Nicole Mann and JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata will carry out a spacewalk Jan. 20 to set up a mounting bracket for a new photo voltaic array that will be sent to the station on a upcoming cargo mission. The spacewalk, the to start with by either astronaut, is scheduled to past six and a fifty percent to seven several hours.
The spacewalk is a sign that functions on the area station are continuing mainly unaffected by the hurt sustained by the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked there Dec. 14 that Roscosmos and NASA have attributed to a micrometeoroid hit. The incident weakened a spacecraft radiator and triggered a coolant leak.
The two agencies announced Jan. 11 that they concluded the spacecraft could not safely return to Earth its 3-person crew of Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio. Instead, a new Soyuz spacecraft, Soyuz MS-23, will be sent to the station with out a crew to change Soyuz MS-22, which will return to Earth, also uncrewed.
On Jan. 18, astronauts moved Rubio’s custom made-equipped seat liner from Soyuz MS-22 to the Crew Dragon spacecraft docked to the station. In the occasion of an unexpected emergency that needed the crew to evacuate, Rubio would return on the Crew Dragon whilst Prokopyev and Petelin remaining on Soyuz MS-22.
“We think that will acquire out some of the heat load that’s in the Soyuz spacecraft and will aid the general posture for us,” Dina Contella, operations integration supervisor for the ISS application at NASA, all through an Jan. 17 briefing about the forthcoming spacewalk.
That move of Rubio’s seat into the Crew Dragon is only a non permanent evaluate. Just after Soyuz MS-23 arrives at the station, his seat liner, together with people for Prokopyev and Petelin, will be transferred into Soyuz MS-23. Soyuz MS-23 is scheduled to start Feb. 20, docking with the station two days later.
The launch of Soyuz MS-23 will delay slightly the Crew-6 Crew Dragon launch. At a Jan. 11 briefing, NASA said it would choose up to a couple weeks to revise the routine for both equally that mission and other flights to the station in the around long term. Contella stated at the spacewalk briefing that Crew-6 was scheduled to launch in mid to late February, with the Crew-5 Crew Dragon returning a couple times later.
The Crew-6 mission incorporates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi from the United Arab Emirates. The UAE’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre declared Jan. 19 that the Crew-6 mission was scheduled for start no earlier than Feb. 26, about a week later on than beforehand prepared.
Contella explained that Crew-6 will be followed by a cargo Dragon mission, CRS-27, in March. That will in convert be followed by a Cygnus cargo spacecraft, NG-19, even though she did not point out when it would launch. NG-19 will be the very last Cygnus spacecraft to start on the current version of the Antares rocket as Northrop Grumman is effective with Firefly Aerospace on a new initial phase of the car.
The selection to substitute Soyuz MS-22 with Soyuz MS-23 indicates that Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio will increase their continue to be on the ISS. The a few at first have been scheduled to return to Earth in March but will remain up to 6 more months. Contella reported they will most likely return in late September, about a year immediately after arriving. “We’re wanting at the specific timing of that, but at this place, that would be when the car would be prepared to come household.”
The Soyuz coolant leak took location as Prokopyev and Petelin were getting ready for a spacewalk, which was termed off as a final result and has not but been rescheduled. “Our Russian colleagues are doing the job on their forward ideas for spacewalks at this place,” she claimed.