SpaceX Crew Dragon may get shield upgrade after Soyuz leak

SpaceX’s astronaut taxi could get a shield upgrade.

NASA is considering asking SpaceX to beef up the shielding on the company’s Crew Dragon capsule after something blows a small hole in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft in December 2022, agency officials said. said during a press conference on Wednesday (Jan. 25).

The strike, possibly caused by a micrometeoroid, occurred while the Soyuz was docked at the International Space Station (ISS), where it remains today. The impact caused a coolant leak that made the Soyuz vehicle, known as MS-22, unsafe to carry scientists home except in an emergency.

So the Russian space agency Roscosmos decided to launch an empty Soyuz on Feb. 20 to return three MS-22 operatives to Earth. That trip is expected to take place in September, about six months after the first scheduled date of homecoming.

Related: International Space Station: Live Updates

Negotiations with SpaceX are in the early stages; The idea of boosting the shield was just raised on Tuesday (Jan. 24) at a regularly scheduled commercial crew meeting, said Steve Stich, director of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

“We started talking a little bit about – Is there anything we can do now?” he said at Wednesday’s press conference, which provided an update on ISS operations and SpaceX’s next mission to the station, Crew-6, scheduled for March 26.

SpaceX’s Sarah Walker says the company is aligned with NASA’s goals. Walker, who is the director of Dragon’s mission management, also emphasized that all tests so far show that the Crew Dragon currently stationed at the ISS, named Endurance, is working well.

“Dragon’s systems are healthy and working exceptionally well,” Walker said during Wednesday’s press conference for Endurance, which launched from the orbiting laboratory last October on SpaceX’s Crew-5 mission for NASA.

The launch of SpaceX’s Crew-5 on Oct. 5, 2022, which delivered the Endurance spacecraft to the International Space Station with four crew members. Specifically, a fifth astronaut could be placed on the Endurance to return to Earth, NASA said. (Image credit: Josh Dinner/Space.com)

Roscosmos officials say the damaged Soyuz MS-22 can accommodate two of its three crew members if an emergency requires the ISS to be evacuated. Returning to Earth would be warm without cooling, however. The two who would make the trip on MS-22 are cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin. A third astronaut, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, will join the four astronauts of Crew-5 on the Endurance in the “lifeboat” space.

NASA considered a number of safety questions before approving Rubio’s seat for the transfer from Soyuz MS-22 to Endurance, agency officials said Wednesday, including ensuring that there is enough oxygen in the SpaceX spacecraft, so that the carbon dioxide is reduced and that the landing will take place safely. .

SpaceX originally designed the Crew Dragon vehicle to carry up to seven people. But Endurance only had four seats, and finding Rubio as an unexpected fifth member required some clever restocking.

“We focused on getting the cargo strap off the CRS-26 vehicle,” Stich said, referring to the SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule currently docked at the ISS. He added: “We were able to put a harness on Frank and put in a seat liner, if needed, and secure him down to the Dragon.”

The next crew program on the International Space Station will be Crew-6, NASA’s orbital mission that flies on a SpaceX spacecraft. From left are Andrey Fedyaev of Russia, Warren “Woody” Hoburg of NASA, Stephen Bowen of NASA, and Sultan Al Neyadi of the United Arab Emirates in front of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. (Image credit: SpaceX)

The empty Soyuz vehicle, known as MS-23, will launch during what NASA administrator Kathy Lueders called “one of the busiest launches in the station’s history” during a press conference on Wednesday.

Among the many planned launches from the ISS in the first half of 2022 are the Crew Flight Test, the first astronaut mission for Boeing’s Starliner capsule; SpaceX-6 crew; and Ax-2, the second crewed mission to the orbiting lab by the private company Axiom Space.

Crew-6 will see Dragon Endeavor fly the United Arab Emirates’ first astronaut on a long-duration mission (Sultan Al Neyadi). His other colleagues are NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg and Russian astronaut Andrey Fedyaev.

The Soyuz MS-22 crew will also see their time in space doubled to a year in orbit as they await the launch of a Soyuz crew later in 2023 to relieve their duties at the ISS. The current forecast for MS-22’s arrival is late September.

Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why am I tall (opens in a new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow him on Twitter. @howellspace (opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) or Facebook (opens in a new tab).

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