Russia Sends Cargo Vehicle To Space Station

Feb 10, 2009



Russia launched another Progress resupply vehicle early today, setting up a docking with the International Space Station (ISS) early Friday morning.

Liftoff of Progress M-66/32P from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan came at 12:49 a.m. EST. The vehicle reached orbit and deployed its solar arrays nominally, according to Russian press reports.

Inside are 2.4 tons of dry cargo and almost another ton of propellant for the space station's Russian thrusters. The vehicle also carries about 100 pounds of oxygen and pressurized air.

Docking will come at 2:19 a.m. EST Friday to the nadir port of the Pirs docking compartment. The station will be slightly lower in orbit than originally planned because a scheduled reboost was deferred to give engineers more time to understand an erroneous software upload that subjected the ISS to excessive shaking during a reboost in January.

That mishap, traced to human error in Mission Control Center-Moscow, did not shorten the orbiting outpost's nominal service life -- which expires in 2016 -- but may have shortened the full span of time after that during which it will be considered safe, according to NASA ISS officials.

Progress M-66 is one of the last to use analog controls, as Russia moves to digital controls on the next generation of the automatic vehicle, according to Russian reports.

Photo: NASA