Russian freighter rockets toward station

A robotic Russian space freighter is rocketing toward the International Space Station tonight after blasting off from the storied Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Filled with 2.7 tons of fuel, air, water, propellant and other supplies, the Progress M30 spacecraft launched from Baikonur -- the site where both Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin lifted off -- at 3:50 p.m. EDT.

A scheduled 5:01 p.m. EDT docking at the station on Friday will be webcast live here in The Flame Trench. Our NASA TV coverage of the orbital link-up will start at 4:30 p.m. EDT with live commentary from Johnson Space Center in Houston. Simply click the NASA TV box to the right to launch our proprietary NASA TV viewer.

Expedition 17 commander Sergey Volkov, the son of Russian cosmonaut Alexander Volkov, will stand ready to take control of the automated docking if anything goes awry during the link-up. Working with Volkov: Expedition 17 flight engineers Oleg Kononenko and Gregory Chamitoff.

Volkov will monitor the station's Ukrainian-built Kurs automated docking system, which is designed to bring the two spacecraft together by remote control. He'll staff the manual TORU docking system controls and take action should intervention become necessary. The Progress will moor itself at the aft end of the Russian Zvezda Service Module, a command-and-control center that doubles as crew quarters.

The Progress cargo craft was lofted into orbit aboard a Soyuz rocket. Onboard are more than 1,900 pounds of propellant, more than 110 pounds of oxygen, almost 465 pounds of water and 2,865 pounds of dry cargo. Total weight is 5,357 pounds.

It replaces the Progress M29 carrier, which was filled with trash and dispatched Sept. 1 from an Earth-facing berthing port on the Zarya module -- the Russian-built, American-financed spacetug that was the original building block of the outpost. It was launched in November 1998; the U.S. Unity module linked to it a month later. Zarya now serves as an orbital storage garage.

Progress M29 reentered the atmosphere and burned up Monday.

IMAGE NOTE: Click to enlarge and save the stunning NASA photo of the Progress M20 cargo craft backing away from the station in 2006 with a load of trash. Then click the enlarged image for an even bigger view. The spacecraft was subsequently incinerated during a destructive dive back through the atmosphere. Photo credit: NASA/Expedition 13 crew.