Russia is about to launch a Progress provide freighter Tuesday on a two-day trek to the Worldwide House Station to ship 5,556 kilos (2,520 kilograms) of cargo, gas, water, and nitrogen to the orbiting analysis laboratory.
A Soyuz-2.1a booster will launch the Progress cargo ship at 8:20 p.m. EDT Tuesday (0020 GMT Wednesday) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The liquid-fueled rocket will deploy the Progress MS-21 spacecraft into orbit about 9 minutes later, and the availability ship will unfurl photo voltaic panels and navigation antennas to start the flight to the house station.
A collection of orbit adjustment burns will put the Progress spacecraft on the right track for an automatic, radar-guided docking on the station’s Poisk module at 10:49 p.m. EDT Thursday (0249 GMT Friday). Russian cosmonauts on the station will open hatches to start unpacking cargo from the pressurized cabin of the Progress spacecraft.
Russia’s Progress MS-19 spacecraft, which delivered provides and gas to the station in February, undocked from the Poisk module Oct. 23 and fired thrusters for a closing disposal burn to fall again into the ambiance. Loaded with trash and different pointless tools, the Progress MS-19 spacecraft largely burned up throughout re-entry, spreading bits of particles over a distant a part of the Pacific Ocean.
The departure of the Progress MS-19 spacecraft clears the best way for the arrival of the brand new Progress provide ship Thursday.
In the meantime, Russian floor crews at Baikonur rolled the Soyuz rocket from its integration hangar to its launch pad Oct. 22. A hydraulic erector raised the rocket vertical on the Website 31 launch complicated for closing liftoff preparations, and gantry arms enclosed the Soyuz launcher to offer technicians with entry to totally different elements of the automobile.
Russian managers plan to satisfy a couple of hours earlier than launch Tuesday to approve loading of kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the Soyuz rocket. The gantry arms on the launch pad will retract away from the rocket within the closing hour of the countdown, and floor crews at Baikonur will insert the launch key right into a management panel about six minutes earlier than liftoff.
Propellant tanks on the launcher can be pressurized starting about two-and-a-half minutes previous to liftoff, and engines on the core stage and strap-on boosters will ignite and ramp as much as full energy to propel the Soyuz off the pad with greater than 900,000 kilos of thrust.
The Soyuz rocket will head northeast from Baikonur to line up with the flight path of the house station. The launcher’s 4 first stage boosters will jettison two minutes into the flight, adopted moments later by jettison of the aerodynamic nostril cone to disclose the Progress provide ship to the atmosphere of house.
The Soyuz core stage, also referred to as the second stage, will shut down and separate almost 5 minutes after launch. A 3rd stage RD-0110 engine will ignite to complete the job of accelerating the Progress cargo freighter to orbital velocity, then will deploy the availability ship nearly 9 minutes into the mission.
The Progress MS-21 mission is called Progress 82P within the house station’s schedule of visiting autos. It’s the 82nd Russian Progress resupply mission to launch to the Worldwide House Station.
Russia’s house company mentioned the Progress MS-21 cargo ship will carry 1,548 kilos (702 kilograms) of hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants to replenish tanks on the house station’s Zvezda service module. The mission can even ship 926 kilos (420 kilograms) of recent water, 90 kilos (41 kilograms) of nitrogen fuel, and a couple of,992 kilos (1,357 kilograms) of dry cargo.
The dry cargo contains meals and clothes for the house station crew members, private protecting tools, and medical, sanitary, and hygienic provides, in accordance with Roscosmos. The Progress MS-21 spacecraft can be full of scientific tools and spools of filament for a 3D printing experiment on the house station.
The Russian provide ship can even reboost the orbital altitude of the station, and carry out any required burns to steer the complicated out of the trail of house junk.
Russia’s Progress MS-20 provide ship, which stays docked on the station, carried out a particles avoidance maneuver Monday to maneuver the outpost away from the expected monitor of a fraction of particles from the Kosmos 1408 satellite tv for pc, which the Russian army destroyed in an anti-satellite weapon take a look at in 2021.
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