Thread by @katlinegrey

Roscosmos shared a statement about the situation with leaks in #SoyuzMS22 and #ProgressMS21, the planned activities, and about the affection of this situation on the future crewed flights: roscosmos.ru/38973/. I made a quick summary for you, as usual. ⤵️

1. About the leak in #SoyuzMS22: it was caused by a micrometeorite of the Geminids. The version of the manufacturing defect was carefully considered and didn’t find confirmation.

2. According to the results of the ground experiment, the possibility of a radiator hit by space debris is considered unlikely, taking into account the direction of movement and the particle's speed, as well as the absence of possible candidates in space debris catalogs.

3. The external thermal control system of Soyuz and Progress ships will not be modernized, because it will require a lot of funds and time, and will lead to an increase in the mass of the ship. However, this case will be taken into account by developing of new crewed spacecrafts.

4. Considering the fact that the State Commission didn’t recommend to use Soyuz MS-22 for the landing of the crew, Soyuz MS-23 was prepared to fly to the station in an automatic mode. There was an idea to launch it with one cosmonaut, but the modification would take too long.

5. #SoyuzMS22 will be landed in automatic mode in March 2023.

6. Progress MS-22 was launched earlier than Soyuz MS-23, because a new ground-based control system equipment was installed on Pad 31 at the end of 2022. It was necessary to check it on a cargo ship before launching a crewed one from this pad.

7. Sergei Prokopiev, Dmitry Petelin and Francisco Rubio will return to Earth on #SoyuzMS23 in September 2023. Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and Loral O’Hara will fly to the ISS the same month on Soyuz MS-24. The Belarusian cosmonaut will fly in 2024.

That’s all, folks, thanks for reading!