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MOSCOW (AP) – A Russian cargo ship has delivered a new cargo of fuel, food and other supplies for the International Space Station.
The Progress MS-09 took off as scheduled at 3:15 am Tuesday (5:51 pm EDT Monday) from the Baikonur cosmodrome rented by Russia to Kazakhstan. The unmanned spacecraft loaded with nearly three tons of supplies landed at the station in automatic mode less than four hours after launch.
It was the first time that such a fast approach was used. In the past, it took about six hours or two days for progressive ships to reach the space outpost.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos said that the faster maneuvering became possible thanks to a new version of the Soyuz rocket. ship in the orbit with greater accuracy. Roscosmos first tried to use the new maneuver last year, but was abandoned for technical reasons.
The current crew of the station includes NASA astronauts Drew Feustel, Ricky Arnold and Serena Aunon-Chancellor, astronaut Gerst, and Russians Oleg Artemyev and Sergey Prokopyev.
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