A leak on the Soyuz MS-22, which docked to the International Space Station, was documented on December 14th 2022 EST: https://twitter.com/russianspaceweb/status/1603211134009593856?s=46&t=SAl7qNp4dx2ZahiuNodkjA
This market resolves YES if astronauts Francisco Rubio, Sergey Prokopyev, and Dmitry Petelin return to Earth early and alive aboard a Dragon capsule before March 29 2023 00:00 UTC.
Soyuz MS-23 successfully docked at the ISS yesterday. All 3 astronauts are slated to return aboard it in September. I’ll keep this market open until the original close date of March 29 in case an evacuation is necessary. https://www.space.com/russia-soyuz-replacement-ms-23-international-space-station-docking
The uncrewed Soyuz MS-23 replacement launched yesterday without issue, and is expected to dock with the ISS tomorrow February 25th.
The Soyuz MS-23 "replacement" launch has been pushed back a couple days, to February 23rd. Meanwhile, Progress MS-21 was inspected after it too experienced a coolant leak, but no damage like that to Soyuz MS-22 was observed. https://spacenews.com/russia-reschedules-soyuz-launch-after-progress-undocks/
Another Russian spacecraft docked at the ISS, the Progress MS-21, has a coolant leak. https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/another-russian-spacecraft-at-iss-has-a-coolant-leak/
Having both a Soyuz and a Progress experience coolant leaks at all is quite surprising, never mind in such a short period of time. While it may be coincidental, the possibility of a common design or manufacturing defect will have to be investigated.
Manifold in the wild: A Tweet by Alan Grow
Sincerely hoping no one has to face the music here, and the February Soyuz MS-23 mission goes off without a hitch. 🤞 Credit to @ManifoldMarkets for keeping me interested in this story. Being the resolver for a prediction market = a great new mental hack! https://manifold.markets/alangrow/will-the-three-iss-astronauts-assig?r=YWxhbmdyb3c
The geopolitics of this are amusing — they’re literally playing musical chairs in space now.
Rubio’s seat on the MS-22 is being moved to the Crew-5 Dragon, but Prokopyev’s and Petelin’s remain where they are, even though the Dragon can accommodate 2 more for a max of 7.
If evacuation is necessary before the MS-23 replacement arrives, it sounds like the current plan is to send Prokopyev & Petelin back on the damaged MS-22 (yikes). I want to make it clear this would resolves to NO in that case — as stated, all 3 astronauts would need to return via Dragon.
On January 8th it was unofficially reported that:
the damaged Soyuz MS-22 will return home unmanned
the two Russian cosmonauts assigned to it will return on the Soyuz MS-23 instead, which will now launch early and with 2 empty seats
the American assigned to it, Francisco Rubio, will extend his stay and return on the Crew 6 Dragon later this year
Source: https://tlpnetwork.com/news/2023/01/crew-rescue-missions-scheduled-following-ms22-leak
An official announcement is expected January 11th.
@alangrow The official announcement today named Soyuz MS-23, now scheduled for early launch on February 20th, as the departure plan for all 3 astronauts. Instead of launching with 1 crewmember and 2 empty seats as speculated above, MS-23 will launch unmanned, with all 3 seats empty. https://spaceflightnow.com/2023/01/11/russia-to-launch-replacement-for-damaged-soyuz-crew-capsule-at-space-station/
Note, however:
In the unlikely event of an evacuation, NASA and Roscosmos are working with SpaceX to potentially accommodate at least one of the Soyuz MS-22 crew members on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft docked at the space station. SpaceX’s Dragon Endurance spacecraft delivered NASA astronauts Nicole Mann, Josh Cassada, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina to the station in October on the Crew-5 mission.
This would require not only that the damaged soyuz was judged non-viable, but that the astronauts had to leave early for some reason. I don't think that has ever happened?
@Multicore Not only that, but they'd have to leave early on the Dragon instead of the Soyuz MS-23, which seems like the default plan for an early evacuation at present. This market is intentionally a longshot.
Last week, the story was that a micrometeoroid had probably punctured the coolant line: https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/micrometeoroid-strike-could-be-cause-russian-spacecraft-leak-official-2022-12-15/
At today’s press conference, the Gemini micrometeoroid theory was discarded — wrong angle of impact. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/dec/23/latest-soyuz-capsule-leak-prompts-russians-to-plan-possible-rescue-of-space-station-crew
What caused the leak? A man-made “space junk” micrometeoroid? Sabotage? A hardware issue? Publicly the favored rescue plan still seems to be Soyuz MS-23, but some of these root causes could implicate both MS-22 and MS-23, making Dragon more likely.
Speculation that Dragon, not a replacement Soyuz, could be the rescue plan: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33995082
Manifold in the wild: A Tweet by Alan Grow