MOSCOW, January 12. /TASS/. Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolay Chub, as well as NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, who were scheduled to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) in the spring of 2023, will launch to orbit in the fall, Roscosmos Executive Director for Manned Space Programs Sergey Krikalev said.
"The mission that was expected to launch in the spring will be postponed to the fall, and these guys (the Soyuz MS-22 crew members - TASS) will have to carry out their mission longer," he told the Rossiya-24 TV channel.
"The only thing that we can do is to reschedule the fall launch to a bit earlier in the year but no final decision has been made yet as the best options for the flight are under discussion," Krikalev added.
The Roscosmos official earlier told reporters that the Soyuz MS-22 mission would be extended for several months due to the damage done to the surface of the instrument and equipment compartment of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft.
The MS-22 spacecraft’s radiator was damaged on December 15, 2022. A state commission eventually decided that the spacecraft would be brought back to Earth in an unmanned mode, while cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, as well as astronaut Frank Rubio, whose mission had been extended, would return aboard the Soyuz MS-23 ship.