HOUSTON — Russia’s 41st Progress supply craft docked with the International Space Station on Jan. 29, delivering three tons of fuel, food, pressurized air and other supplies, including the Kedr mini-satellite, a student experiment.
The automated linkup with the station’s Pirs module took place at 9:39 p.m. EST, as the two spacecraft sailed 220 mi. above the Atlantic Ocean east of Uruguay.
Cosmonauts Dmitry Kondratyev and Oleg Skripochka are scheduled to hand-deploy the 66-lb. ARISSat-1 student satellite developed by the Radio Amateur Satellite Corp., NASA’s education office, RSC-Energia and others during a Feb. 16 spacewalk.
The small satellite carries the call sign “Kedr,” borrowed from Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who became the first human in space 50 years ago on April 12.
The satellite carries student experiments and equipment to transmit 25 greetings in 15 languages as well as photos of the Earth.
Progress 41 will remain docked to Pirs until late April. The arrival of the Russian capsule followed by two days the rendezvous and capture of the Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency’s HTV-2 unmanned cargo capsule, named Kounotori. Two of the station’s crew grappled Kounotori with the Canadian robot arm and berthed the spacecraft to the U.S. segment’s Harmony module. The Japanese supply craft delivered 5.3 tons of equipment (Aerospace DAILY, Jan. 28).
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