The Progress 9 spacecraft on a Russian rocket shortly before launch
Avi Blizovsky
The crew of the International Space Station filled an old cargo spaceship with trash, and now they are preparing for the arrival of another robotic visitor - a Russian spaceship full of food, supplies and equipment that should arrive this Sunday, 29/7 at the space station. The Progress spacecraft was launched on a Soyuz rocket on Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Preparations for the launch of Atlantis
The unmanned probe Fergus 9 will dock at the space station and replace its predecessor that has been docked there since June. The Progress 8 spacecraft will remain in space for another two weeks and will be used to photograph smog and smoke over northeastern Russia.
Russian ground controllers will then direct the spacecraft to burn up in the atmosphere.
Progress 9 which is the first of three spacecraft expected to visit the space station in the coming weeks. On October 2, the space shuttle Atlantis will be launched from Canaveral in Florida for an 11-day journey. The shuttle flight will be the first since June. NASA grounded the shuttle fleet after technicians found cracks in the liquid hydrogen fuel supply lines in all four shuttles.
During the assembly mission, three spacewalks are planned for the Atlantis astronauts to upgrade and connect components to the modular complex floating at an altitude of about 350 km.
Another Russian rocket is scheduled to take off on October 28 to the space station. The Soyuz team will appoint one Russian and one Belgian. The cosmonauts will bring with them a spacecraft that will be used as an escape vehicle from the station in case of an emergency. The American singer Lance Bays was trained for months to join them as a paying passenger, but the pop star was unable to raise the amount of 20 million dollars, and therefore the Russians replaced him with additional cargo.
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