Russia Launches Replacement Spacecraft For Astronauts Stranded By Coolant Leak

Russia launched a Soyuz spacecraft that will replace a capsule that sprang a coolant leak in December, leaving two cosmonauts and one NASA astronaut without a ride home. CNN reports: Liftoff of the capsule, called the Soyuz MS-23, took place out of Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome launch site in Kazakhstan on Thursday at 7:24 p.m. ET, which is 5:24 a.m. Friday local time. The uncrewed spacecraft will spend about two days in orbit, maneuvering toward the International Space Station It's expected to dock with the Poisk module -- which is on the space station's Russian-run portion -- just after 8 p.m. ET Saturday. The Soyuz MS-23 will be the return vehicle for cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, all of whom traveled to the space station aboard the Soyuz MS-22 capsule in September. Rather than flying with crew members aboard, the Soyuz MS-23 launched on Thursday with only a "Zero-G indicator," which can be any object that is left in the cabin and is designed to float freely when the capsule enters microgravity. For this mission, the indicator is a teddy bear tethered by a string inside the cabin.

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