Pending the arrival of the new 'lifeboat', the Soyuz MS-23 which will be launched on February 20, the organization of a possible emergency plan on the International Space Station (ISS) is reviewed: if necessary, the NASA astronaut Frank Rubio will return to Earth aboard the Crew Dragon shuttle, while Russians Dimitri Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev will be evacuated aboard the Soyuz MS-22 which suffered a loss of coolant last December.
This is what the new emergency plan announced on Telegram by the Russian space agency Roscosmos provides.
"The ISS and Soyuz MS-22 systems are functioning normally - writes the Russian space agency - but in the event of an accident, the crew will need an emergency evacuation to Earth before the arrival of the Soyuz MS-23" scheduled for February 21st.
For this reason it was decided that between 17 and 18 January Frank Rubio's place will be temporarily moved from Soyuz MS-22 to Crew Dragon, while those of the two Russians will remain on the old Soyuz which crashed in December: it was in fact judged safer that the shuttle can only carry two astronauts to reduce the temperature and humidity on board.
"After Soyuz MS-23 has arrived on the ISS - specifies Roscosmos - the seats of all three astronauts, including Frank Rubio, will be transferred there".
