Russia launches rescue ship to space station after leaks

HOUSTON — Russia launched a rescue ship Friday for two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut whose initial trip home resulted in a dangerous leak while parked at the International Space Station.

The new empty Soyuz capsule is due to arrive at the orbiting laboratory on Sunday.

The cause of the capsule leak in December was a micrometeorite that punctured an external radiator, pouring coolant out of it. The same thing happened again earlier this month, this time on a moored Russian cargo ship. The camera showed a small hole in each spacecraft.

The Russian space agency has delayed the launch of the new Soyuz spacecraft in search of manufacturing defects. No problems were found, and the agency proceeded with a pre-dawn launch on Friday from Kazakhstan of a capsule with supplies strapped to three seats.

Given the urgent need for this capsule, two senior NASA officials traveled from the US to oversee the launch in person. To everyone’s relief, the capsule safely reached orbit nine minutes after liftoff — “a perfect orbital entry,” said Houston-based Rob Navias of NASA’s Mission Control Center.

Officials decided it was too risky to bring NASA cosmonauts Frank Rubio and Russians Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin back on the damaged Soyuz next month, as originally planned. Without coolant, cabin temperatures would spike during re-entry to Earth, potentially damaging computers and other equipment and exposing the equipped crew to excessive heat.

Until a new Soyuz arrives, contingency plans call for Rubio to switch to the SpaceX crew capsule, which is docked to the space station. Prokopiev and Petelin remain on their damaged Soyuz due to the unlikely need for a quick escape. Russian engineers have come to the conclusion that if there is one less person on board, the temperature will be, we hope, manageable.

The damaged Soyuz will return to Earth unmanned by the end of March for engineers to inspect.

Three men launched this Soyuz last September for a six-month mission. Now they will stay in space for a whole year until a new capsule is ready to replace their crew before liftoff in September. It was their Soyuz that had just launched, there was no one on board.

The damaged supply ship was filled with debris and set free over the weekend, burning up in the atmosphere as originally planned.

“The Russians continue to monitor very closely” leaks from both spacecraft, Dana Weigel, deputy director of NASA’s space station program, told reporters earlier this week. “They look at everything… to try and figure it out.”

NASA has a new team of four launching a SpaceX rocket early Monday morning from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SpaceX’s William Gerstenmeier said the four astronauts, who returned to Earth a few weeks later, had already inspected the Dragon capsule that would take them home, and “everything went fine.”