The International
Space Station (ISS) reached a higher orbit Thursday after a cargo ship fired
its engines during a brief, but successful, maneuver, NASA and Russian space
officials said.
The
Progress 21 cargo ship docked at the aft end of the station's Zvezda module
fired its onboard engines for 6.5 minutes, boosting the orbital laboratory's
orbit by about 1.7 miles (2.8 kilometers), NASA Johnson Space Center
spokesperson James Hartsfield told SPACE.com.
NASA
officials said the orbital boost prepared the ISS for the June arrival of
Progress 22, a new cargo ship that will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome,
Kazakhstan in Central Asia atop a Soyuz rocket.
Progress 22
is expected to launch on June 24 and dock at the ISS two days later, Hartsfield
said, adding that an older cargo ship - Progress
20 - will be cast off prior to the new spacecraft's arrival. Progress 20
has been docked
at the Russian-built Pirs docking compartment since December 23, 2005.
Thursday's
ISS orbit reboost comes after an aborted
test of the two ISS engines attached to the Zvezda
module's aft end. Russian ISS controllers used the test to check whether
the Zvezda engines, which were last used in July 2000, were still operational.
The failed engine firing did not affect the docking of Progress 21.
Progress 21
arrived at the ISS on April 26 after a two-day spaceflight
from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The cargo ship ferried 2.5 tons of food and supplies
to ISS
Expedition 13 commander Pavel
Vinogradov and flight engineer Jeffrey
Williams. The two astronauts are in the midst of a six-month mission aboard
the ISS and arrived
at the station on April 1.
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