News

July 24, 2014
Unmanned logistics spacecraft Progress M-24M in orbit

At 01:44:44 Moscow Time, logistics spacecraft Progress M-24M was launched from the Baikonur launch site.

The purpose of the launch is to support further in-orbit operation of the International Space Station (ISS) in accordance with Russian commitments under that project.

The main objective of the mission is to deliver to the Space Station about 2.3 tons of various cargoes that are needed to continue the ISS mission in manned mode and provide living and working conditions for the crew.

The spacecraft was put into a parking low-Earth orbit with the following parameters: 51.65° inclination, 192.65 km minimal altitude, 223.34 km maximum altitude, 88.40 minutes orbital period.

The onboard systems of the spacecraft operate normally.

At the launch site the pre-launch processing and launch operations were supervised by the State Commission for manned systems flight tests (chaired by the head of Roskosmos O.N. Ostapenko) and the Technical Management for flight tests of manned space systems, headed by the RSC Energia President and General Designer V.A. Lopota.

According to the telemetry data and reports from the crew of ISS Expedition 40, the space station systems function normally.

The docking of the logistics spacecraft with the space station is scheduled for July 24, at 07:30 Moscow Time.

 

For reference:

1. Shipped to the ISS in the spacecraft compartments are supplies of propellant, oxygen, air, water, food rations, including natural form foods, hardware to support the operation of the station systems and equipment, hardware for scientific research and experiments, additional hardware for the Russian Segment modules, as well as packages for the station crew.
2. Currently working in low-Earth orbit under the ISS program are Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Aleksandr Skvortsov, Maxim Surayev, and US astronauts Steven Swanson, Reid Wiseman and european astronaut Alexander Gerst.
3. Progress M-24M is to dock to a docking port on the Russian module Pirs, from which logistics vehicle Progress M-23M had departed and set off on a free flight on July 23. In the course of free flight till the end of July of this year it is to perform space experiment Radar-Progress to study, using ground-based observation equipment, the reflective properties of plasma irregularities generated in ionosphere during operation of the onboard thrusters.