Soyuz MS-23 undocked from the ISS before returning to Earth – Kommersant

The Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station (ISS). Three cosmonauts are returning to Earth on board the ship; they were on the ISS longer than others due to the depressurization of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, on which they were supposed to return to Earth six months ago.

There are three cosmonauts on board the ship: Russians Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and American Francisco Rubio. This was the longest expedition under the ISS program: the crew spent 371 days in space. For Sergei Prokopyev this was the second flight; Dmitry Petelin and Francisco Rubio were on the ISS for the first time.

As reported in broadcasts Roscosmos, in a few hours the ship’s propulsion system will give a braking impulse to deorbit. After this, the Soyuz MS-23 will split into sections and enter the atmosphere. Landing in the steppe of Kazakhstan is expected at 14.17 Moscow time.

The astronauts were delivered to the ISS by the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft on September 21, 2022. Three months later, on December 15, after a micrometeorite hit, the Soyuz cooling systems depressurized. The crew was forced to stay on the ISS for another six months, until experts decided that it was dangerous to return the astronauts on such a ship. On March 28, Soyuz MS-22 landed in Kazakhstan without a crew. The Soyuz MS-23 was sent to replace it.

Now the crew of Expedition 70 remains on the ISS: Russians Oleg Kononenko, Nikolay Chub and Konstantin Borisov, Americans Jasmine Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara, Danish Andreas Mogensen and Japanese Satoshi Furukawa.

Anastasia Larina