MOSCOW. Feb 22 (Interfax) - Specialists from the United States offered to return cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin to Earth on a Crew Dragon spacecraft in case of an emergency at the International Space Station (ISS), Roscosmos Executive Director for Manned Space Programs Sergei Krikalev said.
"The U.S. offered to consider an option of returning all crew members on the [same] spacecraft because it is theoretically possible, but in practice [...] it is also actually a risky operation, this is why we divided the crew in order to minimize the risks," Krikalev said in a video released by the Roscosmos press service on Wednesday.
NASA specialists were fully involved in the search for resolutions of the incidents surrounding the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, he said. "They started looking for how they could help involving their spacecraft. They offered some opportunities, perhaps even in delivering cargo, if that would be necessary," Krikalev said.
Roscosmos said on February 14 that in case of emergency evacuation from the ISS, NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio, who is a member of the Russian spaceship crew, would return to Earth on Crew Dragon and cosmonauts Prokopyev and Petelin on the faulty Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft.
On December 20, 2022, Roscosmos head Yury Borisov said U.S. specialists had proposed that the crew of the faulty Soyuz MS-22 spaceship return to Earth from the ISS on board a U.S. spaceship, but it was not necessary.
On December 15, 2022, Roscosmos said that Russian cosmonauts had cancelled a spacewalk from the ISS after discovering a leak in the outer loop of the MS-22's radiator. On January 11, Borisov said that an analysis confirmed that the spacecraft was damaged by a micrometeorite. A piece of space debris is deemed responsible for the 1mm hole in the skin of the instrument module. The damaged Soyuz MS-22 is supposed to land unmanned.