Recently, a crew capsule landed on Earth. However, why was it empty?

Photo Credit: MSN Three of the seats on the Soyuz spacecraft that docked with Earth on Tuesday were empty, in contrast to the typical practice of bringing astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS). Soyuz MS-22, in what is believed to be the first flight of its sort, detached from the space station without any crew on board and took two hours to land in Kazakhstan after an automated, parachute-assisted descent. The capsule was, however, empty of any crew for a good reason: last December, when parked at the ISS, this ship experienced a large coolant leak. A lot of liquid could be seen gushing out of the spacecraft in a video that was taken at the time. Photo Credit: Phys.org In case the Soyuz capsule's inside heated to a dangerous degree as it reached Earth's atmosphere quickly, it was decided that it would be too unsafe to use it to return three crew members. Yet, Roscosmos, NASA's Russian counterpart, was still eager to bring the Soyuz spacecraft to Earth so they could analyze it and try to pinpoint exactly what caused the leak. The engineers' study should provide a clear answer, however the prevailing theory holds that the capsule may have been hit by a micrometeoroid while docked at the station. What happened to the three crew members that boarded Soyuz MS-22 in September to fly to the International Space Station? Also Read: Four astronauts are successfully launched by SpaceX towards the ISS Frank Rubio of NASA and Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin of Roscosmos are still on board the orbiting station, which is 250 miles above Earth. While they were without a mode of transportation for several months, Roscosmos sent up an empty replacement Soyuz capsule in February; it is currently stationed at the space station. The mishap caused the mission of the trio to be prolonged by a full six months; the three crew members will now return to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-23 in September rather than this month.