Space station crew welcomes Soyuz replacement amid preparations for Crew Dragon launch in Florida

Russia’s uncrewed spacecraft “Soyuz” performed a flawless robotic rendezvous and docked at the International Space Station on Saturday, replacing a spacecraft. damaged phraseGive three members of the lab team a trusty life raft and a safe ride home at the end of an extended mission.

Meanwhile, Florida’s SpaceX was preparing to launch its Crew Dragon capsule Monday morning to ferry another crew of four to the outpost.

The Soyuz MS-23/69S spacecraft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday, carrying supplies and equipment in place of a crew, and oriented itself toward a perfect robotic dock on Russia’s Poisk space module at 7:58 p.m. EDT.

The new Soyuz will replace the MS-22 vehicle that carried Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petlin, and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio into orbit last September.

They were originally planning to return to Earth next month, but on December 14, their Soyuz MS-22 vehicle wash By micrometeorological rupture of a line that carries the coolant to the external radiators. As a result, all available soda was launched into space.

After conducting an analysis, Russian engineers determined that the spacecraft could not safely transport the three crew members back to Earth due to the potential for critical computers and other sensitive equipment to overheat after being turned off.

Instead, they moved the MS-23 launch vehicle to serve as an emergency evacuation class lifeboat, except for the crew’s eventual return to Earth. To get the normal crew rotation schedule back on track, Prokopyev and his colleagues will spend an entire year in space instead of six months.

But with the arrival of the Soyuz MS-23 ferry, they will once again have a reliable spacecraft to take them home in the event of a medical emergency or any other issue that might require immediate evacuation from the space station.

The other four members of the space station crew — Crew V Commander Nicole Mann and Josh Kasada, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, and astronaut Anna Kikina — were launched to the laboratory complex last October aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. They plan to return to Earth around March 6th.

Their replacements — Crew 6 Commander Stephen Bowen, Woody Hoburgh, Cosmonaut Andrey Vidyaev and Emirati Astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi — are scheduled to launch from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center Monday at 1:45 a.m.

Bowen and his bandmates strapped down the Dragon crew Thursday night and took part in a countdown rehearsal. A few hours later, after the crew left, SpaceX engineers tested the Falcon 9’s first-stage engines to see if it was ready to fly.

The team plans to work hard after 11 p.m. on Sunday. Assuming liftoff Monday morning, Crew-6 will arrive at the space station at 2:38 a.m. Tuesday, docking at the space-facing front door of the Harmony module.