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upstart writes:

An extra seat will accommodate a NASA astronaut left stranded after a micrometeorite damaged a Russian Soyuz spacecraft last month:

A seat liner from the damaged Soyuz MS-22 capsule at the International Space Station has been relocated to Endurance, converting the SpaceX Crew Dragon to a five-person "lifeboat" should the crew be forced to evacuate in the event of an extreme emergency.

The International Space Station mission management team made the decision to relocate the seat liner from Soyuz MS-22 to the Endurance Crew Dragon on January 12, according to a NASA statement. The seat liner in question belongs to NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, who flew to the ISS on September 21, 2022 aboard the Russian Soyuz craft. This is being done to "provide lifeboat capabilities in the event Rubio would need to return to Earth because of an emergency evacuation from the space station," the space agency said.

An apparent micrometeorite struck the Soyuz in December, damaging its cooling system. Roscosmos deemed the spacecraft as being unsafe for a crew ride back to Earth, forcing the Russian space agency and NASA to come up with a solution. That solution is MS-23—an uncrewed replacement Soyuz vehicle that won't launch to the ISS until February 22 at the earliest.

[...] The replacement MS-23 Soyuz is expected to arrive at the ISS in late February, but that doesn't mean the three-person crew will immediately return to Earth. A replacement crew was supposed to fly on MS-23, but that mission now likely won't fly until the fall of 2023. A consequence of this is that the MS-22 trio might have to stay on the ISS for an entire year. Dina Contella, ISS program operations integration manager, hinted as much during a news briefing held on Tuesday, saying Rubio, Prokopyev, and Petelin will "probably" return to Earth in September, as reported in Ars Technica.

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