Russian cargo spacecraft arriving at ISS today: Watch it live

Progress 96 Cargo Ship Docking - YouTube

Russia's robotic Progress 96 cargo spacecraft will meet up with the space station today (Sept. 19), and you can watch the action live.

Progress 96 launched atop a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday (Sept. 16), kicking off a three-day orbital chase of the International Space Station (ISS).

That chase will come to an end today around 9:46 a.m. EDT (1346 GMT), when the freighter docks with the space-facing port of the ISS' Poisk module. You can watch it live here, courtesy of NASA; coverage begins at 9:00 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT).

An orbiting spacecraft is seen from above, with Earth in the background — Russia's Progress 84 cargo craft is pictured shortly after undocking from the International Space Station’s Poisk module on Nov. 29, 2023. (Image credit: NASA)

Progress 96 is carrying about 3 tons of food, fuel and other supplies for the occupants of the ISS.

There are currently seven of those folks: Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir and Anil Menon of NASA, the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot, and Pyotr Dubrov, Andrey Fedyaev and Anna Kikina of Russia's space agency, Roscosmos.

Progress 96 will stay attached to the ISS for about five months. It will then be loaded up with trash and sent to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

This is the ultimate fate of most ISS resupply spacecraft — every Progress, HTV-X vehicle (which is built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Cygnus (provided by Northrop Grumman). The only reusable freighter in the current fleet is SpaceX's Dragon capsule.

Michael Wall is the Spaceflight and Tech Editor for Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers human and robotic spaceflight, military space, and exoplanets, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.