TCEP Space

Progress Nine Unmanned Spacecraft Arrives At Station

        The Progress Nine unmanned Russian re-supply craft successfully docked with the aft docking port of the Zvezda Service Module of the International Space Station on Sunday 29 September 2002 at 1701 Greenwich Mean Time, as the two spacecraft flew over Central Asia, after a four-day flight following its launch on Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The spacecraft delivered almost a ton of food, fuel and supplies to the Expedition Five on board the space station and also for the Expedition Six crew.

        The automated docking went off without a hitch as Expedition Five Commander Valery Korzun, NASA ISS Science Officer Peggy Whitson, and Flight Engineer Sergei Treschev viewed the arrival of the new capsule from inside the Zvezda module. A few minutes later, hooks and latches closed between the two vehicles to form an airtight seal. Commander Korzun was prepared to take over manual control of the Progress spacecraft for the docking in the event its automated rendezvous system did not work, but the linkup was executed flawlessly. The crew was scheduled to open the hatches between Zvezda and Progress shortly afterwards and will then begin unloading supplies from the craft on Monday.

        The older Progress Eight vehicle, which arrived at the ISS in June and which was undocked five days earlier, temporarily remained in orbit a safe distance away from the station, spending another ten days aloft to enable Russian flight controllers to document smog and smoke over north-eastern Russia through its cameras.

        The Progress docking cleared the way for the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis on the STS-112 mission on Wednesday 2 October to deliver the fourteen-ton Starboard One Truss to the station.  A Wednesday launch would result in Atlantis' docking to the ISS on Friday 4 October.  Atlantis's Commander Jeff Ashby, Pilot Pam Melroy and Mission Specialists Dave Wolf, Sandy Magnus, Piers Sellers and Fyodor Yurchikhin are currently in the final stages of their pre-launch preparations.

With acknowledgement to NASA for source material for editing.

Copyright Richard West. Page updated 23 October 2011.