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Progress Freighter Launched Atop Soyuz Rocket to ISS
By Jim Banke
Senior Producer,
posted: 10:00 pm ET
28 August 2003
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- With still another two months to go onboard the International Space Station, the Expedition Seven crew of Ed Lu and Yuri Malenchenko are about to get a welcome taste of home. Fresh fruit, food and other supplies packed inside a robot Progress freighter are on their way and due to arrive at the frontier outpost on Saturday. Altogether about a half-ton of equipment and provisions were loaded in to the cargo ship, which launched atop a Soyuz-U rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Thursday. Liftoff from Kazakhstan was right on time at 9:48 p.m. EDT (0148 GMT Friday) and the Progress craft achieved orbit less than 10 minutes later, according to Russian media reports. Designated Progress 12 by NASA, the unmanned ship is scheduled to automatically dock with the aft port of the Zvezda service module at 11:45 p.m. EDT Saturday (0345 GMT Sunday). Lu and Malenchenko will begin unpacking the Progress soon after, looking for surprises from home -- including some new DVDs and CD's -- and enjoying the tastes and smells that remind them of life on the surface of the planet. The pair are scheduled to return to Earth on Oct. 28, flying in the same Soyuz TMA-2 spacecraft they rode into orbit. Replacing them will be the Expedition Eight crew of Michael Foale and Alexander Kaleri -- and many of the supplies inside the Progress 12 is intended for Foale and Kaleri.Astronaut Pedro Duque of Spain, representing the European Space Agency, will occupy the third Soyuz seat on the way up with Expedition Eight. He'll spend eight days onboard the ISS and then return home with the Expedition Seven crew. To set the stage for the arrival of Progress 12, the Progress 10 ship undocked from the station at 6:48 p.m. EDT (2248 GMT) Wednesday. Filled with trash and equipment no longer needed on the station, the Progress 10 was sent burning up in Earth's atmosphere a few hours after it undocked. Another Progress freighter is docked to the Pirs airlock module. It is to undock from the station on Sept. 4 and be destroyed on re-entry. That will clear the way for Expedition Eight's Soyuz TMA-3 to dock on Oct. 20. With the grounding of NASA's space shuttle, Russian Soyuz and Progress vehicles are the only way to get people and cargo to and from the space station.
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