An unmanned Russian resupply ship hauling 2.5 tons of cargo successfully docked at the International Space Station today. Cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, using a joystick in the station's Zvezda service module, manually guided the Progress 40 into the Pirs docking port at 12:36 p.m. EDT, as the station flew 225 miles above western Kazakhstan.
"Contact, capture confirmed," Kaleri radioed, according to a translater. "We actually felt that, Moscow." NASA TV commentator Rob Navias said it was not immediately clear why Kaleri needed to take manual control of the Progress, overriding the automated Kurs docking system.
The Progress was packed with 1,918 pounds of propellant, 1,100 pounds of oxygen, 498 pounds of water and 2,804 pounds of food, spare parts and supplies. The ship joins another Progress and two Soyuz spacecraft already docked at the station.
Three Russians and three Americans living on the station are expected to open the Progress hatch later today and spend days unloading the supplies.
The Expedition 25 crew expects to welcome shuttle Discovery and its six crew members next Friday, if the shuttle launches at 3:52 p.m. Wednesday as currently planned.
NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock is the Expedition 25 commander. The flight engineers are cosmonauts Kaleri, Oleg Skripochka and Fyodor Yurchikhin and NASA astronauts Scott Kelly and Shannon Walker.
6 comments:
In 2005 George W. Bush ordered both the Space Station and Shuttle canceled by 2010, this year. Obama was able to save the Station, but too much of the tooling for the Shuttle had already been destroyed.
None of the tooling has been destroyed... YET....
in 2009 Barack H. Obama ordered the cancellation of NASA manned spaceflight for the forseeable future.
in 2010 the U.S. congress tried to save NASA manned spaceflight.
The ISS was never ordered by anybody to be cancelled by 2010. No such plan ever existed.
Manned spaceflight will be saved by SpaceX, Bigelow Aerosplace, Virgin Galactic, Scaled Composites, etc.
"Manned spaceflight will be saved by SpaceX, Bigelow Aerosplace, Virgin Galactic, Scaled Composites, etc."
Not in your lifetime.
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