At 7:58 p.m. EST, the uncrewed Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station’s Poisk module. The spacecraft launched at 7:24 p.m. EST on February 23 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Soyuz is delivering 946 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station.
This new Soyuz will replace the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft following a radiator coolant leak on December 14, 2022. The Soyuz MS-22 transported NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin to the space station last September. The three crew members will return to Earth on the new Soyuz MS-23 later this year.
The damaged Soyuz MS-22 is scheduled to undock from the station in late March and return to Earth for an uncrewed parachute-assisted landing in Kazakhstan, and post-flight analysis by Roscosmos.
The Soyuz is a type of spacecraft that was originally developed by the Soviet Union in the 1960s as part of the Vostok program for human spaceflight. Since then, it has been extensively used by both the Soviet and Russian space agencies for a wide range of missions, including transporting cosmonauts and astronauts to and from space stations like Mir and the International Space Station (ISS), launching robotic missions to other planets, and conducting scientific research in microgravity.
The Soyuz spacecraft consists of three modules: the orbital module, the descent module, and the service module. It is launched on top of a Soyuz rocket and returns to Earth via parachute landing in the steppes of Kazakhstan. Overall, the Soyuz has proven to be a reliable and versatile spacecraft, and continues to play an important role in human spaceflight today.
Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.
Follow us on Google and Google News.