Progress Will Dock To The Aft Port Of The Station’s Zvezda Module, Friday, Oct 29

The uncrewed Russian Progress 79 is safely in orbit headed for the International Space Station following launch at 8 p.m. (5 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 28, Baikonur time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The resupply ship reached preliminary orbit and deployed its solar arrays and navigational antennas as planned for a two-day rendezvous on its way to meet up with the orbiting laboratory and its Expedition 66 crew members.

After making 33 orbits of Earth on its journey, Progress will dock to the aft port of the station’s Zvezda module at 9:34 p.m. Friday, Oct 29. Docking procedures will begin at 8:45 p.m.

Carrying more than three tons of food, fuel, and supplies for the Expedition 66 crew, the Progress 79 resupply spacecraft will spend about seven months at the station. The space station was flying over the south Atlantic Ocean at the time of the launch.

In the meantime; at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Falcon 9 rocket with the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance attached rolled out to the launch pad early Wednesday morning and now stands vertical. Endurance will launch four commercial crew astronauts toward the space station on Sunday at 2:21 a.m. SpaceX Crew-3 Commander Raja Chari will lead Pilot Thomas Marshburn and Mission Specialists Kayla Barron and Matthias Maurer on a one-day ride to the Harmony module’s forward docking port.

FMI: www.nasa.gov