Three astronauts living aboard the International Space
Station (ISS) welcomed an unmanned visitor bearing gifts late Friday as a fresh
cargo ship eased into a berth outside their orbital laboratory.
The Russian-built
Progress 24 spacecraft docked at the ISS on time at 9:59 p.m. EST (0259 Jan. 20
GMT) with perfect precision as the station's Expedition
14 astronaut crew looked on [image].
"We can see Progress
in the window, it's just a perfect visual," said Expedition
14 flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin from inside the ISS as the cargo ship
arrived [image].
Progress 24
ferried more than 2.5 tons of fresh supplies for Tyurin and his Expedition 14
crewmates: NASA's mission commander
Michael Lopez-Alegria and flight
engineer Sunita Williams. The space freighter's arrival ended a two-day
trek that began with a Jan.
17 launch just one day after the ISS crew jettisoned
the older Progress 22 cargo ship from its Pirs docking compartment
perch to make way for the new delivery [image].
Tyurin, who also serves as
the Expedition 14 Soyuz commander, stood ready to take remote control of
Progress 24 and guide it in manually should it deviate from an automated flight
path, but the spacecraft flew true [image].
Docking occurred as the ISS and Progress 24 passed about 220 miles (354 kilometers)
above the Atlantic Ocean just off southeast coast of Uruguay.
Unlike the last Progress vehicle
to arrive at the ISS -- Progress
23 -- there was no sign of any malfunction with a Progress 24 navigation
antenna designed to fold into a stowed position just before docking.
"We aimed all of our
optical hardware at the antenna, so we are monitoring," Tyurin said as Progress
24 closed in on its docking port. "The antenna is closed."
Russian flight controllers
believe the driving system designed to stow the Progress 23 antenna failed to
work properly. An inspection of the still-deployed antenna by Tyurin and
Lopez-Alegria during a November
spacewalk found it wedged against a handrail near the vehicle's berth at
the aft end of the space station's Zvezda
service module. The Expedition 14 astronauts will stage a spacewalk no earlier
than Feb. 22 to cut a wire to free the antenna and lash it into place against
the Progress 23 hull, NASA officials said.
But before that spacewalk,
the Expedition 14 astronauts have a long night ahead to close out their
post-docking duties.
Tucked among the 5,115
pounds (2,320 kilograms) of cargo are 110 pounds (49 kilograms)
of oxygen, about 1,720 pounds (780 kilograms) of propellant and 3,285
pounds (1,490 kilograms) of dry supplies such as spare parts, spacewalk
hardware and new experiments. Russian space officials have said Progress 24's
cargo manifest also included new Japanese experiment hardware to study protein crystallization
aboard the ISS.
Hatches between the ISS and
Progress 24 are expected to be opened at about 2:00 a.m. EST (0700 GMT)
Saturday, with the newly arrived spacecraft's systems to be deactivated about
30 minutes later. The ISS Expedition 14 crew took a nap earlier Friday to be
well-rested for Progress 24's arrival, awaking at about 6:00 p.m. EST (2300
GMT) to ready the ISS for its newest visiting spacecraft.
Over the next few days, the
space station astronauts will haul the new Progress 24 supplies into the ISS. Lopez-Alegria
and Williams will also gear up for three spacewalks within a two-week period --
an ISS first for an expedition crew -- to overhaul the station's cooling system,
NASA officials said.
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