Oleg Kononenko can fly alone to the ISS in February

The crew of the Soyuz MS-22 emergency spacecraft is apparently destined to “hover” in orbit for another six months. The MK correspondent found out the details of the available options for the return of astronauts.

Recall that on December 15, due to damage to the instrumentation compartment (PAO) of the ship, a leak from the coolant system occurred from the outside. As a result, the spacewalk of our cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin was cancelled. In addition, the question arose, on what will the crew members of the pierced Soyuz MS-22 return?

Help “MK”. The crew of Soyuz MS-22: commander Sergei Prokopyev, flight engineer Dmitry Petelelin, flight engineer – NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio.

Immediately after the emergency, there was concern about the use of this ship, devoid of a cooling system – many devices and systems located in the PAO could heat up to a critical state and fail. Then the threat will already arise for the astronauts making the landing.

It seems that during the New Year holidays, experts did not sit idle, but came up with options for getting out of the current situation.

According to the information shared with MK by a source in the space industry, at present, our and American experts are considering at least two main methods for landing crew members, provided that their Soyuz MS-22 descends to Earth without a crew.

According to the first, instead of the damaged spacecraft, in February, the Soyuz MS-23, which is now being prepared for launch, piloted by the commander of the CPC cosmonaut detachment Oleg Kononenko, is being lifted to the ISS. Further, the alignment may be as follows: Kononenko, who arrived with two empty seats, remains on the ISS with Sergei Prokopiev, Dmitry Petelin and Francisco Rubio for six months, until August-September. That is, the mission of the Soyuz MS-22 crew is being extended twice. When the time comes to fly away, Kononenko will descend to Earth on an American ship – Dragon (with the SpaceX Crew-6 mission). This ship should arrive at the station in mid-March with one free seat (now our Andrey Fedyaev is claiming it, who, if everything is outplayed in Roscosmos and NASA, will “fly out” of the Dragon crew).

As for Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio, they calmly rearrange their seat-chairs from Soyuz MS-22 to Soyuz MS-23 and return, also in September, in the same composition to Earth.

This option, according to my interlocutor, has only one significant plus: the guaranteed docking of the February rescue ship (if the automation fails, for which experts allocate only 1.5 percent, Kononenko will dock it to the station manually). The disadvantages are connected with the destruction of the existing crews: in addition to the aforementioned Andrey Fedyaev, Nikolai Chub and the American Laurel O’Hara will most likely lose their turn for the long-awaited flight into space. The fact is that the last two are part of the Soyuz MS-23 crew, have long worked together with Oleg Kononenko, and no one will urgently look for another commander for them instead of the one who flew away without them. Most likely, the situation will throw their flight back as far as 2024 – they will let the Soyuz MS-24 and MS-25 crews forward.

The second option, with the dispatch of the Soyuz MS-23 unmanned spacecraft in February, is considered by my interlocutor as more effective. In this case, the ship docks to the ISS and “waits” for the completion of the work of the Prokopenko-Petelin-Rubio crew, who will descend on it together in September.

To replace them, the well-coordinated crew of Kononenko, who have worked together for a year and a half, arrives on the Soyuz MS-24. It turns out that the entire flight program is simply shifted by half a year, but at the same time, not a single cosmonaut, including Andrei Fedyaev, loses the opportunity to go into space as part of the planned queue.

There is only one minus here, but it can also turn out to be very significant: if the automatic docking fails, then the astronauts will be left without a rescue ship for some more time, until the Soyuz MS-24 flight. Then it turns out that Soyuz MS-23 was launched in vain. As a result, Roskosmos risks losing two ships – the emergency Soyuz MS-22 and the undocked Soyuz MS-23. In this case, as in the case of the leak in MS-22, the situation cannot be attributed to external influence, and the seats in the rocket and space industry can stagger under several bosses at once.

In general, the choice will not be easy. All options will be considered at the meeting of the Council of Chief Designers on January 10th. The one that will be chosen will be approved the next day, January 11, by the State Commission chaired by Roscosmos Director General Yuri Borisov.

If Kononenko flies alone to the ISS, it will be the first solo flight into space after 20 years. The last to land was Yang Liwei in 2003, and before him, in 1969, Boris Volynov landed alone.