ISS rescue Soyuz launches this week, won't return crew until September

Crew trapped on the ISS due to a leaky Soyuz capsule ought to settle in for a longer than planned stay: Russian space agency Roscosmos announced today that the trio won't be coming home until September. Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, along with NASA 'naut Francisco Rubio, arrived on the ISS last September and …

[Anonymous Coward]

So lots of people on the ground have to be crunching the numbers

What are the odds that two random projectiles in space hit the same system on two different capsules a matter of a few inches apart? That would be reasonably tight grouping if someone was ACTUALLY shooting at it.

Might want to tape a blanket over the new capsule after it arrives if they are going to keep letting them sit on the docking ring for months. That or take the cosmonauts TP-82's away next time.

[An_Old_Dog]

(Not) Bringing the Boys Home

What's with the huge delay between MS-23 launch and return? Is Putin holding the American "hostage" as a pressure-point re the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

[phuzz]

Re: (Not) Bringing the Boys Home

More likely they don't have a new Soyuz ready for the next crew, until near September (because they're effectively down one craft now).

So the current crew get an extension, otherwise there'd be a gap with no Soyuzs docked to the ISS, and that would be embarrassing for Roscosmos. (Although the US was in a similar situation for several years after the Shuttle stopped flying, and they got over it.)

[Jonathon Green]

Leaving another Russian craft in orbit for months ... what could go wrong?

Probably not as much as if it was a Boeing CST-100 Starliner…

[John Brown (no body)]

I wonder what...

...the contractual terms are for unexpected overtime. That's quite a few hours to put on the timesheet :-)