Space station’s orbit increased before next launch of Soyuz manned spacecraft

MOSCOW, November 13. /TASS/. Specialists of Russia’s TsNIIMash Mission Control Center carried out a maneuver to increase the average orbital altitude of the International Space Station (ISS), using the thrusters of the Progress MS-14 resupply ship, according to an expert from Russia’s Mission Control Center. "We report a successful maneuver," the expert said adding that the maneuver to increase the ISS orbit was carried out to ensure the docking of the Soyuz MS-18 manned spacecraft, which is scheduled for the spring of 2021. The maneuver to increase the altitude of the orbital outpost was executed with the use of thrusters of the Progress MS-14 resupply ship, which is docked to the assembly compartment of the Zvezda module. A spokesman for the Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos told TASS earlier that thrusters of the Progress MS-14 resupply ship were scheduled to be fired at 22:50 Moscow time (November 12) and then be operated for 363.5 seconds. As a result of the maneuver, the space station’s average orbital altitude was set to increase by 1.2 kilometers (0.7 miles) to 419.4 kilometers (260.6 miles) over the Earth’s surface. The previous adjustment of the International Space Station’s orbit was carried out on October 7. The adjustment was made before the launch of the Soyuz MS-17 manned spacecraft. On October 14, the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft with three crew members reached the International Space Station (ISS) under the two-orbit scheme for the first time, setting a record by the speed of flight to the orbital outpost. The current ISS expedition’s crew comprises Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Ryzhikov and Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and also NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins. In early November, Russia’s inter-agency commission approved the crew of the 65th long-term expedition that will blast off aboard a Soyuz MS-18 crewed spacecraft from the Baikonur spaceport to the International Space Station in April 2021. The basic crew includes Oleg Novitsky, Pyotr Dubrov and Sergei Korsakov. The back-up crew consists of Anton Shkaplerov, Andrei Babkin and Dmitry Petelin. Therefore, a fully Russian crew will set off for the orbital outpost in the spring of 2021. Before that, a fully Russian crew flew to Russia’s Mir orbiter in 2000. Read more