Russia said on Wednesday it would soon launch an uncrewed Soyuz spacecraft to bring home two cosmonauts and a US astronaut from the International Space Station after the Soyuz MS-22 capsule meant for their return sprang a radiator coolant leak apparently caused by a micrometeorite strike.Because of the damage, the interior of the capsule could become dangerously hot upon reentry, posing a potential danger to its passengers.The three crew members concerned, Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergei Prokopyev and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, will now extend their mission by a few more months and return aboard the new MS-23 capsule, which is to arrive at the ISS on February 20.The three began their stay at the station in September and were to remain till mid-March.Sergei Krikalev, executive director of Human Space Flight Programs at Roscosmos, said the MS-22 would return to Earth after their departure, carrying only equipment and experiments that are not “temperature sensitive.”“Space is not a safe place, and not a safe environment. We have meteorites, we have a vacuum and we have a high temperature and we have complicated hardware that can fail,” Krikalev said. “Now we are facing one of the scenarios … we are prepared for this situation.”He said that if there were to be an emergency at the ISS before the replacement spacecraft arrived, the damaged capsule could still be used in a pinch despite the increased danger.Space has remained a rare area in which Moscow and Washington have continued cooperationdespite the Russian invasion of Ukraine and consequent Western sanctions on Russia.This article was first published on DW.