The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft has undocked from the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) and is now heading for Earth. We are talking about a ship that suffered in December from a depressurization of the cooling circuit – as a result, it was decided to return it without a crew on board.
Image source: Roscosmos
The ship carries about 218 kg of payload – the results of experiments, station equipment for research and reuse. According to TASS, the descent vehicle should land at 14:45 Moscow time southeast of the Kazakh city of Zhezkazgan. Among other things, the spacesuit battery, which was discharged during the spacewalk by Oleg Artemiev and Denis Matveev, will be delivered to Earth for study last summer. The results of growing a mushroom culture as part of the Cascade experiment and the results of an experiment to create a probiotic drink on board the ISS will also be delivered – the experiment was called Probiovit.
According to TASS, after turning on the ship’s engines for braking, the Soyuz MS-22 will descend from orbit – the household compartment and the instrument-assembly compartment should separate from the descent vehicle, which should burn out in the upper atmosphere. In dense layers, deceleration will begin with the formation of a plasma cloud with a temperature of about 2 thousand degrees Celsius. Further, the ship will continue braking with the help of parachutes, and just before touching the earth’s surface, the engines responsible for a soft landing should work.
As you know, the Soyuz MS-22 set off for the ISS on September 21, 2022, delivering cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin, as well as American astronaut Frank Rubio, to the ISS – this is the first launch under the agreement between Roscosmos and NASA on crossover flights.
The depressurization of the thermal control system occurred on December 15, 2022, after which the temperature in the ship rose and the state commission decided to return the ship to Earth without a crew. The Soyuz is believed to have been damaged by a sporadic micrometeoroid. The crew of the ship will return on the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft, which has already arrived at the ISS in an unmanned mode and docked to the station. The return of people should take place only in the fall of this year.
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