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Science 29th Progress spacecraft preparing for ISS mission
Science 29th Progress spacecraft preparing for ISS mission | 29th Progress spacecraft preparing for ISS mission |
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| by William Atkins | |
| Thursday, 08 May 2008 | |
Related storiesLaunch of the Progress M-64 (ISS Progress 29, or 29P) mission is now scheduled for 4:22 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), or 2022 GMT, on May 14, 2008. The launch site for the mission is the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The launch vehicle is a Soyuz-U rocket. The mission is directed by the Russian Federation Space Agency (RSA), Russia's counterpart to the United States' NASA. International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 17 commander and RSA cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and flight engineers and RSA cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman will be receiving a new shipment of fuel, food, and other supplies on the visit of the unmanned vehicle to the space station. NASA TV will not broadcast its launch, but will broadcast its automatic docking to the ISS live beginning at 5 p.m. EDT Friday, May 16, 2008. The docking is expected to occur to the Earth-facing port of the Russian Zarya service module at 5:37 p.m. EDT. The Progress spacecraft is an unpiloted, automatically flown version of the Soyuz spacecraft. It will eventually be filled with waste, undocked from the space station, and de-orbited for its fiery demise within Earth’s atmosphere. The Progress is one of two unmanned spacecraft that has re-supplied the International Space Station. As of May 2008, the other unmanned spacecraft bringing supplies to the ISS is the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) automatic transfer vehicle (ATV), the Jules Verne. The ESA has so far sent one unmanned spacecraft to the ISS, while the Russians have sent 28--with this mission of Progress M-64, the number will become 29. Supplies are needed on a periodic basis for the astronauts and cosmonauts on the ISS. One person onboard the space station needs about 65 pounds (30 kilograms) of consumables per day. For one astronaut, that is about five tons for a six-month stay at the space station. For three astronauts, that multiples to fifteen tons for a one-half-year mission. When the ISS is finally completed in 2010, six, maybe even up to nine, occupants will stay onboard the International Space Station at one time. That number means a huge amount of consumables (60 tons per year for six people, 90 tons for nine) will need to be delivered to the space station.
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