With a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship already on the way to the International Space Station, Russian engineers readied a Progress freighter for launch from Kazakhstan early Friday on a three-day flight to deliver 2.7 tons of supplies and equipment to the lab complex.
Liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan was scheduled for 4:34 a.m. EST (12:34 p.m. local time), the moment Earth’s rotation carries the launch pad into the plane of the space station’s orbit — a requirement for spacecraft attempting to rendezvous with a target moving at nearly 5 miles per second.
The climb to space was expected to last about eight minutes and 45 seconds. After release from the Soyuz booster’s upper stage, the Progress MS-13/74P spacecraft was programmed to execute an autonomous three-day rendezvous, docking at the lab’s Pirs module around 5:38 a.m. Monday.
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The Progress will bring 1,433 pounds of propellant to the station that will be used to maintain the lab’s 260-mile altitude. The spacecraft also is delivering 110 pounds of pressurized oxygen, 926 pounds of water and more than 3,000 pounds of dry cargo.
Sixteen hours before the Progress took off, SpaceX launched a Dragon cargo ship from Cape Canaveral carrying 2.6 tons of space station crew supplies, hardware and research gear. The Dragon is expected to arrive at the outpost early Sunday for capture and berthing by the lab’s robot arm.
