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The
module completed the almost two-hour return from the ISS without
a crew, landing in the Kazakh steppe on Tuesday afternoon, a few
hundred kilometres from the Baikonur cosmodrome, home to
Russia's space launches.
The landing was broadcast online by the Russian space agency
Roscosmos.
A significant coolant leak was discovered in the capsule last
December - caused by a 0.8-millimetre hole in its outer skin.
A tiny meteorite is likely to have pierced the structure while
it was docked, experts say. Images captured from the exterior of
the ISS showed coolant fluid spewing into space, while Roscosmos
said temperatures at one point rose to 30 Celsius (86
Fahrenheit) inside the capsule.
The leaks prompted Roscosmos and the U.S. space agency NASA to
rearrange their schedules and postpone space walks.
Russia sent a back-up capsule - the MS-23 - to the ISS last
month and decided to bring the damaged MS-22 back to Earth
without a crew.
The Two Russian cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut who were due to
return to Earth in March will now stay on the ISS until
September.
Roscosmos said the capsule returned on Tuesday with 218 kg (481
lb) of cargo, including the results of scientific experiments
and equipment from the station that would be analysed on Earth
or reused in future missions.
Washington and Moscow have maintained cooperation in space
despite relations hitting their lowest in decades, with
astronauts stationed together at the ISS, and also ferried back
and forth jointly.
Russia has said it will quit the ISS and launch its own
independent space station at some time in the future, though
plans for how and when remain under discussion.
The space station, a science laboratory spanning the size of a
football field and orbiting some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth,
has been occupied continuously for more than two decades under a
U.S.-Russian-led partnership that also includes Canada, Japan
and 11 European countries.
(Reporting by Jake Cordell; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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