Russia launched a rescue ship to the International Space Station for two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut after their original ship sprang a leak while parked at the ISS.
In December, there was a capsule leak said to be caused by a micrometeorite puncturing an external radiator, causing coolant to drain out. This recent mishap seems to be for the same reason, but the leak is now on a docked Russian cargo ship.
After the Russian Space Agency searched for manufacturing defects and found no issues, the agency proceeded with a predawn launch from Kazakhstan of the capsule with bundles of supplies strapped into the three seats.
Feelings were that it was too dangerous to bring NASA’s Frank Rubio and Russia’s Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin back in the damaged Soyuz in March as originally planned. Currently, emergency plans are for Rubio to switch to a SpaceX crew capsule docked at the space station. The damaged supply ship was filled with trash and cut loose, burning up in the atmosphere.
The new, empty Soyuz capsule should arrive at the orbiting lab on Sunday.
