Soyuz MS-22

Soyuz MS-22 is a Russian Soyuz spaceflight to the International Space Station with a crew of three launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on 21 September 2022. The launch was previously planned for 13 September 2022, but in the provisional flight manifest prepared by Roscosmos by the end of Summer 2020, the launch of Soyuz MS-22 was delayed to 21 September 2022, for a mission length of 188 days. The mission was planned before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, continued international collaboration around the ISS has been thrown into doubt by the ongoing event and related sanctions on Russia.

Crew

The original three-Russian member crew was named in May 2021. American astronaut Francisco Rubio replaced Anna Kikina as a part of the Soyuz-Dragon crew swap system of keeping at least one NASA astronaut and one Roscosmos cosmonaut on each of the crew rotation missions. This ensures both countries have a presence on the station, and the ability to maintain their separate systems if either Soyuz or commercial crew vehicles are grounded for an extended period.

Backup crew

Spacecraft

The spacecraft is named in honor of Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who is today considered one of the fathers of modern rocketry and astronautics. Tsiolkovsky's 165th birthday fell on 17 September, a few days before the launch of MS-22.

Cooling Loop Accident

On 15 December 2022 at 12:45 GMT, a "visible stream of flakes" was observed emanating from the Soyuz spacecraft, concurrent with a loss of pressure in the external radiator cooling loop. A scheduled spacewalk for Petelin and Prokopyev was cancelled while the incident was evaluated.

According to preliminary information, the damage left a diameter hole into the external cooler radiator located on the service module of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft. The damage could have been caused by the micrometeoroid or space debris impact.

Two working groups have been formed to find the cause of the incident, analyze the technical condition of the ship and develop recommendations for further actions for ground specialists and the cosmonauts.

Due to the conducted tests of the ship's systems, the temperature in the orbital and descent modules in the first days after the incident reached +30°C, and in the service module - +40°C, but in recent days, the temperature in the whole ship stabilized at about +30°C.

On December 18, 2022, the outer surface of Soyuz MS-22 was examined using the cameras of the manipulator arm. The analysis of the data received on Earth allowed to detect a possible place of damage on the surface of the service module.

If there will be any doubts in the safety of Soyuz-MS22, it will be replaced with Soyuz MS-23 which can be prepared for flight by February 19.https://www.roscosmos.ru/38641/

References

{{Orbital launches in 2022

Crewed Soyuz missions
Spacecraft launched in 2022
2022 in Russia