(ZEROHEDGE) – Russia launched an uncrewed Soyuz spacecraft on Friday for a NASA astronaut and two cosmonauts after their original ride back to Earth was damaged by a micrometeoroid impact while parked at the International Space Station in December.
The rescue plan was announced last month. The empty rescue capsule, Soyuz MS-23, blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early Friday morning and is set to dock at the orbiting lab on Sunday.
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NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin were supposed to return to Earth in March, but when Prokopyev and Petelin were preparing for a spacewalk in mid-December, they noticed liquid coolant particles spraying from the docked Soyuz capsule. The spacewalk was canceled, and NASA and Roscosmos later determined the damaged capsule was too dangerous to return the trio.
