Roscosmos Says Exploring Dragon to Get Expedition 68 Back to Earth in Case of Emergency

WASHINGTON, January 11 (Sputnik) - Roscosmos and NASA are exploring several options, including using a Dragon spaceship, to get the current ISS crew back to earth in case of an emergency following the Soyuz capsule leak, Sergei Krikalev, executive director for human space flight programs at the Russian space agency, said on Wednesday.

"Originally our plan is if we have some kind of malfunction on the station, we are trying to stay on the station as long as possible. We have several scenarios when crew must leave the station otherwise they will have a threat to their life, and in this case as we decided doing our technical investigation that Soyuz is not good for nominal reentry but in case of emergency with extra risk we are going to use this Soyuz at this point. Although together with our NASA colleagues we are looking for several options to minimize these risks, maybe move members or at least one crew member to Dragon," Krikalev told on a press conference.

He added that Expedition 68 will likely be extended for several months.

"We will probably extend stay of this crew expedition 68 onboard the station for extra several months. What will be exact date to send replacement for them, it’s not decided yet but it [the mission] is going to be several months longer," Krikalev stated.

In December a depressurization of the cooling system of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked to the station was discovered. After visual inspection the crew of the spacecraft confirmed a leak in the cooling system.