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The Soyuz spacecraft MS-23, which Russia sent to return astronauts Sergey Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio to Earth, has arrived at the International Space Station.Around , Russia’s Roscosmos Space Agency announced early Sunday morning that the unmanned spacecraft docked with the ISS at 7:58 p.m. ET on Saturday night. , was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on February 24.
MS-23 was originally scheduled to launch later this year, but Roscosmos flew after MS-22 (Prokopiev, Peterin and Rubio’s first return ship) following a micrometeoroid impact in December. has been forced to postpone. The incident put Roscosmos and NASA in an awkward position. In the event of an emergency on the ISS and the entire crew had to be evacuated, it was not clear whether MS-22 would be able to safely transport the crew to Earth. Roscosmos and NASA eventually settled on a contingency plan in which MS-22 was to transport Prokopiev and Peterin while Rubio was scheduled to board her SpaceX Crew-5 Dragon. Thankfully, the two agencies weren’t forced to test their plans.
Once MS-23 is safely docked to the ISS, Prokopiev, Peterin and Rubio will remain on the space station until at least September. The three were originally scheduled to complete the mission in March. Meanwhile, Roscomos plans to bring MS-22 back to Earth sometime next month.
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