A Soyuz crew that may have been stranded on the ISS may have a chance to return home with SpaceX if necessary, the report said. According to a report, NASA may use a SpaceX spacecraft to rescue three space station crews dependent on a leaky Soyuz to get home.

Russia said the Soyuz spacecraft aboard the International Space Station suffered a serious coolant leak on December 15, and a decision on whether it is safe to send crews to Earth will be made in January. If a Soyuz rescue vehicle is needed, it may not arrive until February, two to three weeks before the normal transit in March.

It appears that NASA is considering using SpaceX, which is currently the only company to send astronauts into space from American soil, as a backup if those options fail.

“We’ve asked SpaceX a few questions about their ability to return additional crew members to Dragon if needed, but that’s not our primary focus at this time,” NASA spokeswoman Sandra Jones told Reuters on Wednesday, Dec. SpaceX did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

NASA didn’t specify to Reuters what options are possible with SpaceX, such as whether the company could launch a spare Crew Dragon spacecraft to retrieve the crew, or add more seats to the existing Dragon (called Endeavor) docked with the space station.

All seats on Endeavor are supposedly occupied as Crew-5 is scheduled to arrive in early 2023, including NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina.

The crew used by the survivor Soyuz, designated MS-22, includes Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, who each enter space in a Russian Falcon spacesuit. Normally, SpaceX would only launch crew members wearing SpaceX’s custom-made spacesuit. The report also does not say how this issue can be resolved.

The cause of the leak on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft has yet to be determined, but it may have been caused by space debris or an untraceable micrometroid due to its small size. Further scanning of the Soyuz revealed a hole in the radiator. The ISS crew are not in immediate danger from this situation, but there are concerns that the complex should be evacuated for some reason, as it is possible that three people may not be able to get home safely at that time. Source