News

February 11, 2013.
Unmanned logistics spacecraft Progress M-18M in orbit

At 18:41:46  Moscow Time an automatic transport cargo vehicle Progress M-18M 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 the project.

The main objective of the mission is to deliver more than 2.6 tons of various cargoes to the Station, which are required to continue the ISS mission in a manned mode, and provide living and working conditions for the crew, as well as provide further testing of "fast" four-orbit rendezvous capability of TCV with the station and vehicle docking to the station in the fifth orbit.

The vehicle was inserted into a parking low-Earth orbit with the following parameters: 51,65 deg. inclination, 191,6 km minimal altitude, 246,6 km maximum altitude, 88,6 min orbital period.

The onboard systems of the vehicle operate normally.

At the launch site, the vehicle prelaunch processing and launch operations were performed under the direction of the State Commission (chaired by the head of Roscosmos V.A. Popovkin). The Commission was basing its decisions to implement the vehicle processing and launching phases on the statements of the Technical Management headed by RSC Energia President and Designer General, V.A. Lopota.

According to the telemetry data and ISS prime crew reports, the space station onboard systems operate normally.

The cargo vehicle docking to the station is planned on February 12 at 00:40 Moscow Time.

 

For reference:

1. In its compartments, the vehicle carries into orbit supplies of propellant, oxygen, air, water, food rations, including fresh products, equipment to support the station systems and assemblies functionality, hardware for scientific research and experiments, additional hardware for the Russian segment, as well as packages for the ISS crew
2. Currently working in orbit under the ISS program are: Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy, Evgeny Tarelkin, and Roman Romanenko, NASA astronauts Kevin Ford and Thomas Marshburn, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Christopher Hadfield.
3. The TCV Progress M-18M flight program provides for vehicle rendezvous and docking to the ISS within six hours after the vehicle injection into orbit. Testing of such "fast" docking capability will allow the crews of transport manned vehicles "Soyuz ТМА" to arrive to the ISS during the first flight day, that, will primarily facilitate the process of crew adaption to space flight conditions. In the event of off-nominal situations at rendezvous using the "fast" capability, a transfer to earlier used two-day rendezvous capability is provided for.