Astronauts aboard
the International Space Station (ISS) have a fresh supply of food, water and
other vital supplies onboard after the flawless Sunday arrival of an unmanned
Russian cargo ship.
The automated
supply ship Progress 26 docked
at the space station at 2:40 p.m. EDT (1840 GMT) as both spacecraft flew
high above central Europe.
"Contact
confirmed, we can see capture," said Expedition 15 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin,
a Russian cosmonaut who stood ready to take remote control of Progress 26
should its automated docking systems fail.
But
Progress 26 did not require Yurchikhin's help to dock at the station's
Russian-built Pirs docking compartment, and successfully delivered 2.5 tons of
fresh supplies to the station's three-astronaut crew. The spacecraft launched
towards the ISS Aug. 2 from the central Asian spaceport of Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Sundays and
Saturdays are typically off-duty days for astronauts aboard the space station,
but the Expedition 15 crew took Friday off to compensate for Progress 26's
weekend arrival, NASA officials said.
Yurchikhin
and Expedition 15 flight engineers Oleg Kotov and Clayton Anderson are expected
to open the hatches between Progress 26 and the ISS at about 5:40 p.m. EDT
(2140 GMT), but will not begin unloading the cargo ship until Monday, they
added.
Fresh
supplies, new computers
Tucked
aboard Progress 26 are 5,111 pounds (2,318 kilograms) of supplies that include:
1,600 pounds (725 kilograms) of propellant, more than 100 pounds of oxygen and
air, and over 496 pounds (224 kilograms) of water.
The
spacecraft is also carrying about 2,954 pounds (1,339 kilograms) of dry cargo such
as food, clothing, science equipment and spare parts. A set of new command and
navigation computers and other hardware is also included to replace those
aboard the space station's Russian-built Zvezda service module.
Zvezda's
current command and navigation computer
system crashed in June during NASA's STS-117 construction mission to the
ISS. Yurchkhin and Kotov, a fellow Russian cosmonaut, later restored the vital
computers by installing jumper cables to bypass faulty hardware within them.
The
cosmonauts plan to replace the older computer system, along with a damaged
electronics box and corroded cables, during a days-long repair effort during
NASA's STS-118 shuttle mission to the ISS.
Flawless
docking
Similar in
appearance to the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that ferry astronauts to and from
the ISS, unmanned Progress cargo ships regularly resupply the orbital
laboratory every few months. Progress vehicles are disposable, and are
discarded to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere at the end of their flights.
"Thank you
for assisting us and for reliable technology," Yurchikhin told flight
controllers at the Russian Federal Space Agency's Mission Control in Korolev,
outside Moscow, after the docking.
Progress 26
is moored to an ISS port that previously hosted the Progress 24 cargo ship
before that spacecraft was discarded last week. Two other Russian vehicles, the
unmanned Progress 25 spacecraft - which arrived in May - and the Expedition 15 crew's
Soyuz TMA-10
vehicle, are also docked at the station's Russian-built berths.
The Expedition
15 crew will now turn its attention to the planned Aug. 8 launch and Friday arrival
of NASA's STS-118 astronaut crew aboard the space shuttle Endeavour.
Commanded
by veteran spaceflyer Scott Kelly, Endeavour's STS-118 astronauts plan to
deliver still more cargo - about 5,000 pounds (2,267 kilograms) - to the ISS
along with spare parts and a new starboard section of the outpost's main truss.
Endeavour's
crew also includes educator-turned-astronaut
Barbara Morgan, who originally served as NASA's backup to the first Teacher
in Space Christa McAuliffe. McAuliffe and six NASA astronauts were aboard the
space shuttle Challenger when it broke apart just after launch in January 1986.
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