The MS-23 rescue craft took off, with no one on board, from the Baikonur cosmodrome, according to live video broadcasts from Russia's Roscosmos space agency and NASA.

The spacecraft's takeoff and orbiting "went normally," Roscosmos said in a statement, adding that its docking with the International Space Station (ISS) was scheduled for February 26 at 0101 GMT.

The take-off of this device was initially scheduled for mid-March and it was to transport a new crew of three people to the space station.

The ship finally left empty in order to be able to bring back the three passengers stranded on board the ISS: the American Frank Rubio as well as the Russians Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitri Peteline.

They will not be the first to stay so long on board the ISS, this duration having already been equaled just last year.

- Micrometeorite -

The two Russian cosmonauts and the American astronaut took off at the end of September 2022 with the Soyuz MS-22.

The vessels aboard which astronauts and cosmonauts arrive on the ISS then remain docked to the station throughout their stay, in order to be able to serve as a backup vehicle in the event of an emergency evacuation being necessary.

They also leave on board the same craft.

But in December, the Soyuz MS-22 suffered a spectacular leak, due according to Moscow to the impact of a micrometeorite.

Image taken from a NASA video showing a leak that occurred on the Russian Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked with the International Space Station (ISS), December 15, 2022 © HANDOUT / NASA/AFP/Archives

The coolant leak had raised concerns about the temperature that might be reached inside the ship when it returned to Earth.

The Russian space agency has therefore decided that it can only be used in an emergency, and has chosen to send the MS-23 spacecraft as a replacement, which will bring the crew back in September.

The damaged MS-22 ship must be undocked from the ISS and return to Earth empty, a priori at the end of next month.

A leak similar to the December incident also affected another Russian spacecraft, the Progress MS-21 cargo ship, docked at the ISS since October in mid-February.

But this one was not intended to carry passengers, and it undocked last week.

Roscosmos said Tuesday that an "external impact" had caused the leak, and ruled out a manufacturing defect.

Takeoff of Crew-6

In addition to the three crew members who came aboard the Soyuz, the ISS currently has four other passengers, members of the mission called Crew-5, who arrived with a SpaceX Dragon capsule in October 2022.

The American company must send their four replacements to the space station on Monday, as part of the Crew-6 mission: two NASA astronauts, an Emirati astronaut, and a Russian cosmonaut.

Takeoff of the Russian Soyuz MS-23 rescue spacecraft for the International Space Station, February 24, 2022 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan © Handout / Russian Space Agency Roscosmos/AFP

After a handover of a few days, Crew-5 will descend back to Earth.

The ISS is one of the few fields of cooperation still underway between Moscow and Washington since the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, launched a year ago, and the international sanctions that followed.

© 2023 AFP