A Russian Soyuz crew ferry ship blasted off from Kazakhstan on Thursday — kicking off an unpiloted but critical flight to the International Space Station to replace a damaged Soyuz.
Lighting up the pre-dawn sky, the Soyuz 2.1a booster carrying the Soyuz MS-23/69S crew ship shot away from the sprawling Baikonur Cosmodrome at 7:24 p.m. EST , kicking off a 9-minute climb to space.
But on December 14, their Soyuz was hit by a presumed micrometeoroid that ruptured a coolant line. Russian engineers called off the planned return to Earth after concluding the lost coolant could lead to higher-than-normal, possibly unsafe internal temperatures.after a delayThe original MS-23 crew — Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Laral O'Hara — now plan to fly in September aboard the next Soyuz in the sequence, replacing Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio.
Since the MS-22 vehicle was damaged in December, NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos have been forced to rely on a less-than optimal"plan B."
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