14 DAY TRIAL // At 15:45 pm GMT (9:45 am Wednesday, local time), a new resupply mission took off from the Baikonur spaceport, in Kazakhstan. The spacecraft was the Progress 36 capsule, which is currently making its way to the International Space Station, having experienced a successful, picture-perfect launch. The capsule is loaded with tons of supplies, including spare parts, food, propellant, water and oxygen for the five-astronaut crew currently serving as Expedition 22 in low-Earth orbit. The spacecraft takes off just four days ahead of the planned February 7 launch of space shuttle Endeavor.
The unmanned resupply capsule is scheduled to attach itself to the aft port of the Zvezda service module on the orbital facility on Thursday, around 11.30 pm. It will use the Kurs docking system for the job, but astronauts on the ISS will be on station to capture Progress 36 with the robotic arm in case anything goes wrong. Currently, the capsule is traveling in its “chasing orbit,” which will allow it to rendezvous with the ISS in about one day, Space Fellowship reports.
According to the official flight manifest made available by the Russian federal space agency (RosCosmos), the craft carries 926 pounds (420 kilograms) of water, 106 pounds (about 50 kilograms) of oxygen for the station's artificial air system, and around 1,940 pounds of propellant for the thrusters. These small engines are used to maneuver the ISS out of its established orbit for short periods of time, so as to avoid any potentially catastrophic impacts with pieces of space debris. They are also used for small orbital corrections. The rest of the cargo is made up of 2,683 pounds of spare parts and supplies.
Yesterday, RosCosmos flight engineers Maxim Suraev and Oleg Kotov, both part of Expedition 22, investigated the functionality of the Russian robot-operated rendezvous system TORU, which will be used in case Kurs fails to do its job. The cargo carried on Progress 36 is absolutely essential for the crew, as Endeavor will not be bringing any such utilities. The STS-130 mission will spend 13 days on the ISS, affixing the new Tranquility (Node 3) module, as well as the seven-windowed observation chamber Cupola, on the station, and conducting other maintenance work.