NASA is exploring whether SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft could offer an alternative ride home for some ISS crew members after a Russian capsule sprang a leak.
The capsule was supposed to return a crew of two Russian cosmonauts and one U.S. astronaut to Earth early next year.
If Russia cannot launch another Soyuz ship, or decides for some reason that doing so would be too risky, NASA is weighing another option. The leaky Soyuz capsule ferried U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dimitri Petelin to the space station in September for a six-month mission. They were scheduled to return to Earth in March 2023.
A hardware malfunction could raise additional questions for Roscosmos about the integrity of other Soyuz vehicles, such as the one it might send for the crew's rescue, said Mike Suffredini, who led NASA's ISS program for a decade until 2015. NASA has previously said the capsule's temperatures remain "within acceptable limits," with its crew compartment currently being vented with air flow allowed through an open hatch to the ISS.
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