NASA took part in all the discussions and agreed with the plan. It means that Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio will have to stay several extra months at the station, possibly pushing their mission to close to a year. But since it will travel in automatic mode to expedite the launch, a replacement crew will now have to wait until late summer or fall when another capsule is ready. 20 so the crew have a lifeboat in the event of an emergency. Russia says it is planning to pull out of the International Space Station and end its decades-long partnership with NASA at the orbiting outpost, according to the newly appointed head of. They decided to launch a new Soyuz capsule on Feb. 21 (UPI) - Russia's space agency Roscosmos' delayed rescue mission to send a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station and bring three astronauts back to Earth is scheduled to lift. Russian Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio were supposed to use the Soyuz crew capsule to return to Earth in March, but Russian space officials decided that higher temperatures resulting from the coolant leak could make it dangerous to use. Roscosmos said that the incident didn’t affect the docking of the new cargo ship and “will have no impact on the future station program.” The Progress MS-22 delivered almost three tons of food, water and fuel along with scientific equipment for the crew. The announcement came shortly after a new Russian cargo ship docked smoothly at the station on Saturday. The craft is set to be undocked from the station and deorbit to burn in the atmosphere on Feb. Roscosmos noted that before the leak the cargo ship had already been loaded with waste prior to its scheduled disposal. Russia says it will end cooperation with other nations on the International Space Station until the sanctions put on the country are lifted. “We need to conduct a thorough analysis to make sure that it wouldn't affect similar components that will be used in the future,” Krikalev said. Roscosmos has launched a probe into a possible cause of the cooling loop leak, and Krikalev said that experts will closely look at materials and technologies used in spacecraft manufacturing as part of the probe. The depressurization of the cargo craft’s coolant loop follows a similar incident in December with the Soyuz crew capsule, which Russian space officials said had been caused by a tiny meteoroid that left a small hole in the exterior radiator and sent coolant spewing into space. “The crew, which was informed of the cooling loop leak, is in no danger and continuing with normal space station operations.” “Officials are monitoring all International Space Station systems and are not tracking any other issues,” NASA said.
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