Soyuz MS-23 was an uncrewed Russian Soyuz spaceflight that launched from Baikonur on 24 February 2023 to the International Space Station to replace the damaged Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft for landing that NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin launched onboard on 21 September 2022 and had a coolant leak on 14 December before returning to Earth uncrewed on 28 March 2023.[2]
Due to the 0.8 mm (0.031 in)-diameter hole punctured in the radiator of Soyuz MS-22 due to micro-meteoroid impact,[3] there were doubts over the safety of Soyuz MS-22. So it was returned uncrewed like Soyuz 32, and MS-23 was launched uncrewed like Soyuz 34 as a replacement.[4][5] As it was launched uncrewed, it carried ~430 kg (950 lb) dry cargo and equipment in its pressurized section, like a Progress MS spacecraft.
Until the replacement MS-23 docked with the ISS, SpaceX Crew-5 was considered among the options to return the MS-22 crew in case of emergency. This is due to the fact that SpaceX originally designed the Crew Dragon to host a crew of seven at a time. Due to these reasons, the International Space Station mission management team decided to move NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio's Soyuz seat liner from the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft to Dragon Endurance, to provide lifeboat capabilities in the event Rubio would need to return to Earth because of an emergency evacuation from the space station. The seat liner was moved on 17 January 2023, with installation and configuration continuing through most of the day, 18 January 2023. This seat liner swapping is not new between two Soyuz, but this was the first time swapping from Soyuz to Crew Dragon.[6] The change allowed for increased crew protection by reducing the heat load inside the MS-22 spacecraft for cosmonauts Prokopyev and Petelin in the event of an emergency return to Earth. Alongside SpaceX Crew-6 space capsule is designed to bring back crew serving as an emergency evacuation after Crew-5.[7]
As the MS-23 arrived at the space station on 26 February, Rubio's seat liner was transferred to the new Soyuz on 6 March, and the seat liners for Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin were moved from MS-22 to MS-23 on 2 March ahead of their return in the Soyuz.[6]
Crew
Original scenario
The original three-Russian member crew for this scenario was named in May 2021. American astronaut Loral O'Hara replaced Andrey Fedyaev as a part of the Soyuz-Dragon crew swap system of keeping at least one NASA astronaut and one Roscosmos cosmonaut on each of the crew rotation missions. This allows continuous space station occupation by US and Russia and keep backup crew scenarios to prevent vehicle either vehicle grounding like Soyuz MS-10 launch failure or to compensate for delays in launch of crew rotation missions of either vehicles like SpaceX Crew-3, that was delayed due to unfavorable launch weather conditions.[8]
As Soyuz MS-22 was unable to perform crew return, it reentered uncrewed like Soyuz 32, and MS-23 was launched empty like Soyuz 34 to return the crew.[11] The original crewed mission was delayed and reassigned to the MS-24 mission.
Uncrewed missions are designated as Kosmos instead of Soyuz; exceptions are noted "(uncrewed)".
The † sign designates failed missions. Italics designates cancelled missions.
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Templates using the classes class=navbox ({{navbox}}) or class=nomobile ({{sidebar}}) are not displayed in article space on the mobile web site of English Wikipedia. Mobile page views accounted for 60% to 70% of all page views from 2020 through 2025. Briefly, these templates are not included in articles because 1) they are not well designed for mobile, and 2) they significantly increase page sizes—bad for mobile downloads—in a way that is not useful for the mobile use case. You can review/watch phab:T124168 for further discussion.
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