Progress 96 docks at the space station with three tons of supplies

The unpiloted Progress 96 docked to the space-facing port of the station’s Poisk module at 9:44 a.m. EDT (13:44 UTC) on Saturday 19 September, NASA said, carrying about three tons of food, fuel and supplies for the Expedition 75 crew. Roscosmos, which calls the ship Progress MS-35, announced contact a few minutes later.

Three days from Baikonur

The ship lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:33 a.m. EDT (13:33 UTC) on Wednesday 16 September, NASA said, on a Soyuz-2.1b, according to Roscosmos. Insertion into orbit, separation from the rocket’s third stage and the opening of its antennas and solar panels all went as planned, Roscosmos said, and the docking came at the time it announced that afternoon.

It came a week late. At the start of the month NASA had the ship launching on 9 September for a docking two days later; neither agency’s own statements give a reason for the new date.

The port it took

Poisk had been empty since Monday 7 September, when Progress 94 undocked at 11:18 a.m. EDT (15:18 UTC) after docking there in March. Loaded with the station’s rubbish, it fired its engine for re-entry that evening and its unburnt parts fell in a non-navigable area of the Pacific, Roscosmos said. Progress 96 is to stay about five months, according to NASA.

The station’s orbit that day

Our tracking of the ISS shows nothing unusual around the arrival. On 19 September the station orbited between 416 and 423 km above the Earth, according to Orbinauts, its apogee about 300 m lower than a week earlier: the slow sinking of a station that has not fired its engines. No Close approach has been reported for the ISS since 21 August.

What comes next

The next arrival is a crew. NASA and SpaceX are now targeting early October for Crew-13, after an oxidizer valve in the Dragon’s propulsion system was replaced when a leak was detected, NASA said.