ISS News: Progress Docks After Short Trip, Debris Avoided

Progress M-17M, just before docking with the International Space Station (Credits: NASA).

On October 31 at 7:41 GMT, a Soyuz-U launched from Baikonour Cosmodrome carrying a 2.5 ton resupply vessel, Progress M-17M. At 13:33 GMT, Progress M-17M automatically docked with the Zvezda service module on the International Space Station.

“The docking was carried out in automated regime as scheduled,” said a spokesman for Roscosmos Mission Control outside Moscow.

The trip used a shortened rendezvous time that has been tested once before in the previous Progress M-16M. So far the approach has worked well and Russian experts believe a similar shortened rendezvous could be used by crewed craft as early as March 2013. That would likely come as a pleasant change for the astronauts and cosmonauts who currently spend two days in the cramped Soyuz capsule but could soon arrive just six hours after launch.

Unloading Progress’ supplies was pushed off to Thursday on account of the busy Wednesday schedule aboard ISS. Flight Engineer Kevin Ford helped prepare Commander Suni Williams and Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide for their upcoming 6.5 hour spacewalk to replace a leaky radiator. Since it is not known what exactly is leaking, the astronauts plan to reroute to a spare radiator. Also on Wednesday, ISS executed a debris avoidance maneuver at 21:08 GMT using Progress M-16M thrusters. The maneuver was in response to a potential collision with a fragment of the Iridium 33 satellite and was deemed successful. Mission Control plans to proceed with the November 1 spacewalk as scheduled. There is no word as to whether fragments from a Breeze-M that exploded on October 16 and that cross ISS’ orbit will require avoidance maneuvers any time soon.

Watch Progress M-17M launch from Baikonour below: