Russian spacecraft to use one-orbit path to reach orbital outpost within 2 hours

MOSCOW, August 2. /TASS/. Russian spacecraft will use a one-orbit flight plan to reach the International Space Station (ISS) in about two hours, Ballistics Chief at the Energia Space Rocket Corporation (within the federal space agency Roscosmos) Rafail Murtazin told TASS on Monday. "I believe we can do it within two hours with a theoretical minimum of about 1 hour and 20 minutes, i.e. we can make it even faster but, perhaps, it is not worth doing it for safety reasons," Murtazin said in response to a question about the time needed for spacecraft to reach the space station under this scheme. Currently, the calculated time is two hours and seven minutes, the ballistics chief said. "If we optimize the final flight path, reducing the arrival speed and conducting no braking impulses, we can immediately switch to the fly-around phase and so further improve the docking safety," he explained. In April 2019, the Energia Space Rocket Corporation developed a one-orbit path for rendezvousing with the ISS and tested it for the first time during a flight by a Progress MS-17 resupply ship. Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin earlier said that the one-orbit path of a flight to the orbital outpost might be tested in 2022. As Energia Ballistics Chief Murtazin told TASS, the one-orbit path implies that a spacecraft will enter a co-elliptic orbit geometrically similar to the ISS orbit with the help of two impulses. Based on this scheme, a spacecraft will be able to observe the space station from a 23-degree angle to identify the optimal impulse point to propel the spaceship to the ISS area after a half-rotation. Read more