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Progress Docks to Station with Critical Supplies
By Jim Banke
Senior Producer, Cape Canaveral Bureau
posted: 11:00 am ET
04 February 2003
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- An unmanned Progress freighter delivered a ton of food, fuel and other supplies to the International Space Station on Tuesday. The Progress 10 spacecraft, launched Sunday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, automatically docked with the orbiting outpost at 9:49 a.m. EST (1449 GMT) as the complex flew over Asia. Watching from inside the station was the Expedition Six crew of Ken Bowersox, Don Pettit and Nikolai Budarin, who have been in space for 73 days. They are scheduled to open the hatches to Progress by 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT) Tuesday, but will wait until they begin their work day on Wednesday to unpack the cargo. "This Progress provides all the consumables that the current crew onboard needs to remain aloft until the late June and early July timeframe if required," NASA spokesman Rob Navias said. Also loaded aboard the Progress is equipment that science officer Pettit will retrieve almost immediately and take to the Destiny science module on Wednesday to repair the microgravity glove box -- an enclosed chamber where science experiments can be performed. The loss of Columbia and crew on Saturday has put all shuttle missions to the station on hold. The next flight to the station was scheduled for March 1 -- a re-supply mission that was to include exchanging the current Expedition Six crew with a new Expedition Seven crew.Instead, Bowersox, Pettit and Budarin will remain in space until shuttle flights resume, but they can always return to Earth if necessary by flying home in the Soyuz spacecraft that is always docked to the outpost. A new Soyuz spacecraft is scheduled to be ferried by two or three cosmonauts to the space station in late April, and then another unmanned Progress freighter is set to be launched in June. NASA program managers have said the current Expedition Six crew would remain in space indefinitely, but it is at least technically possible for them to be replaced when the Soyuz taxi mission is flown in April, or again in October. On Monday former President Bush and his wife Barbara toured the Johnson Space Center in Houston and spent a few moments talking with the Expedition Six crew to encourage them. "We're all doing fine up here. We're sad at the loss of our friends, but we're also concerned about all of you on the ground and the way you are reacting," Bowersox said. "We know that everyone down there shares a lot of pain."
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