November 1, 2012

Caption: A Progress spacecraft approaches the Space Station prior to docking. Credit: NASA

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

After a successful launch at 3:41 a.m. (local time) Wednesday morning from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Russias Progress 49 cargo vessel docked with the International Space Station (ISS) nearly six hours later, according to Mission Control.

Progress 49 docked automatically to the stations Zvezda service module at 9:33 a.m. on Halloween, carrying nearly 3 tons of supplies to Expedition 33 crew members. Supplies included water, food, fuel, technical equipment, as well as gifts for the astronauts. It was not clear if any of the gifts included candy to celebrate Halloween.

The P49 supply mission follows SpaceXs recent Dragon mission that successfully splashed down in the Pacific on October 28. The Dragon capsule delivered supplies to the ISS on its inaugural supply mission, the first of 12 contracted flights SpaceX has with NASA, reportedly worth $1.6 billion. SpaceXs next mission is scheduled for January 2013.

P49s docking utilized the abbreviated launch-to-rendezvous schedule, which was first used during Russias Progress 48 mission on August 1, 2012. The schedule is designed to reduce the typical two-day flight between launch and docking. Russian space officials are also evaluating this new approach for future manned Soyuz flights.

Flight engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Yuri Malenchenko monitored P49s rendezvous and docking procedure using the Russian telerobotically operated rendezvous system (TORU). Progress is designed to dock automatically via the Kurs automated rendezvous system, but the crew can use TORU to take over if technical issues arise.

The crew will conduct leak checks at the docking interface today (Nov. 1) and open the hatch to the supply vessel and begin the unloading procedure. Once the ship is emptied, it will be filled with trash and unneeded supplies and sent back to Earth in April 2013 for disposal.

In related Space Station news: Mission Control executed a debris avoidance maneuver Tuesday to ensure the ISS would not collide with a piece of space debris from the Iridium 33 satellite. The burn used Progress 48 thrusters to adjust the stations orbit to avoid the debris.

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Russian Progress 49 Cargo Ship Docks With Space Station