Preparing for docking with Russia's Mir space station, a Soyuz TM-30 spacecraft is closing in on the vacant orbital outpost.
On Wednesday, the cosmonauts fired the engine on board the Soyuz, edging the ship closer to the space station. The engine was ignited at 1:57 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (05:57 GMT; 9:57 Moscow Time) and fired for 6.1 seconds as the spacecraft was passing on its 17th orbit around Earth.
The Soyuz had completed two initial maneuvers during its third and fourth orbits, hours after its liftoff into a clear sky over the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Tuesday.
After the latest maneuver, the Soyuz climbed into an orbit over 178 miles (287 kilometers) high, still below the station. Mir is currently circling the Earth in a 215-mile (347-kilometer) high orbit. The lower orbit allows Soyuz to complete each orbit sooner than the station does, closing the distance between the spacecraft.
In the past few days, ground controllers successfully refilled the station's leaking atmosphere from the cache of air tanks on board the Progress spacecraft docked to the station.
The cosmonauts Sergei Zalyotin and flight engineer Alexander Kalery, who are spending their second night in orbit, are expected to get up around 6 p.m. EDT Wednesday (22:00 GMT; Thursday, 2 a.m. Moscow Time), in preparation for the rendezvous with the station.
During its 32nd and 33rd orbit around Earth, the Soyuz will perform final firings of its main engine, bringing the crew to a distance where the final approach to the station -- a touchy maneuver that requires the use of small thrusters -- can be made.
Traditionally for the Russian space program, the docking with Mir is expected to be fully automatic. The crew will stand by in the Soyuz reentry capsule ready to take over the controls should the automatic system fail. The commander can switch to manual control of his spacecraft at any moment in the docking process.
After the docking is complete on Thursday around 2:30 a.m. EDT (06:30 GMT; 10:30 a.m. Moscow Time), the crew will check the connecting mechanisms between Soyuz and Mir. If no leaks or other potential problems are discovered, the crew is expected to enter the station around hour and half after the docking.
Mir was abandoned in August after the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviacosmos) could no longer afford to maintain human occupation of the station. Since then, Western investors came forward with the funding, which allowed the new mission.
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