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Russia Launches Cargo Ship for International Space Station
Russia successfully launched a Progress M1-4 cargo spaceship to the International Space Station (ISS) Thursday morning to provide the Russian-US crew aboard with life necessities, a spokesman for the Russian Aerospace Agency announced Thursday.
The booster rocket Soyuz-U carrying the cargo ship blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:32 a.m. Moscow time (0132 GMT). The ship smoothly separated from the Soyuz booster 10 minutes later, and then it was put into a designed orbit with an apogee of 237 kilometers, a perigee of 194 kilometers, a revolution period of 88.5 minutes and an inclination of 51.6 degrees, the spokesman said.
The supply ship will execute the so-called rendezvous maneuvers for closing in with the ISS and it will automatically dock with the station at 06:06 a.m. Moscow time (0306 GMT) on Saturday. If it fails, the crew will dock the cargo craft "manually."
The Progress M1-4 will deliver to the ISS fuel, equipment, accessories for the life-support systems and the TV network, as well as water and food for the first long-expedition crew on board the station, consisting of Russian astronauts Yuri Gidzenko, Sergei Krikalyov and US astronaut William Shepherd.
According to the Mission Control Center outside Moscow, onboard systems of the 2.5-ton cargo ferry are operating smoothly.
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