Following the departure of the Progress MS-33 cargo spacecraft from the Worldwide House Station on Sept. 7, Progress MS-35 is anticipated to launch to the Station on Wednesday, Sept. 16. The cargo spacecraft will ship pressurized and unpressurized cargo to the station that may maintain the present Expedition 75 crew.
Launch from Kazakhstan
A Soyuz 2.1b rocket will launch the Roscosmos Progress MS-35 cargo car to the Worldwide House Station (ISS) from Web site 31/6 on the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The rocket is anticipated to launch on a northeasterly trajectory at 13:33 UTC throughout an instantaneous launch window. That is obligatory for a launch to the ISS, as automobiles have to launch when the ISS’s orbital aircraft is aligned with the launch web site. This enables the spacecraft to achieve an orbit that matches the Station’s inclination, enabling a faster, extra environment friendly rendezvous.
Roscosmos delayed an earlier launch try on Sept. 9 on account of points with Soyuz’s third stage. The car was rolled again to the meeting constructing and defective elements had been fastened earlier than it returned to the pad for the present launch try.
The Progress MS-35 Soyuz 2.1b is assembled forward of launch. (Credit score: Roscosmos)
The Soyuz 2.1b car is a three-stage, medium-lift rocket developed by Roscosmos. 4 liquid-fueled RD-107A boosters encompass the second “core” stage, which is powered by a single RD-108A engine. The third stage makes use of a single RD-0124 oxygen-rich staged-combustion engine. All three phases make the most of kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen (LOX) propellants.
Standing 46.3 m tall with a complete liftoff thrust of 4,550 kilonewtons (kN), the Soyuz 2.1b car can ship as much as 8,670 kg to low-Earth orbit (LEO). This mission would be the sixth Soyuz 2.1b launch of 2026 and the one hundred and fifth total.
The Progress MS-35 car and mission
Roscosmos’s Progress MS-35 spacecraft will ship 2,600 kg of cargo to the ISS. It will embrace pressurized cargo akin to meals, science provides, and Station upkeep gear. Alongside the pressurized items might be gadgets akin to gasoline that may be pumped straight into the Zvezda module’s propulsion system, potable water, and gases to replenish the onboard ambiance.
The Progress MS-35 spacecraft has a complete launch mass of seven,280 kg and may carry as much as 2,600 kg of payload. The car is 7.4 m lengthy and has a diameter of two.7 m. The spacecraft additionally has a ten.7-m photo voltaic array that, as soon as unfurled, powers the car.
Progress MS-35 throughout pre-launch processing. (Credit score: Roscosmos)
As soon as Soyuz has positioned the spacecraft in orbit, Progress will spend roughly 48 hours and full 34 orbits to catch as much as the Station. The car is anticipated to dock to the ISS’s Poisk zenith port on Friday, Sept. 18, at 18:37 UTC. Progress will use the first automated rendezvous system, Kurs-NA, to dock to the Station; nonetheless, the Teleoperator Management Mode (TORU) may also be out there. TORU is a guide docking system that enables cosmonauts to dock a car to the Station if the automated system fails.
The departure of Progress MS-33 from the ISS’s Poisk zenith port cleared the best way for the brand new Russian cargo car to launch. Progress MS-33 undocked from the Station on Sept. 7 at 18:27 UTC and destructively reentered Earth’s ambiance, safely ending its mission. The spacecraft launched to the ISS on March 22 and spent roughly six months docked to the orbiting laboratory.
Render of present docked automobiles to the ISS previous to MS-35 launch (Credit score: NASA)
Roscosmos first developed the Progress spacecraft in 1978. The unique Progress 7K-TG automobiles provided the LEO stations Salyut 6, Salyut 7, and Mir. The present Progress MS collection has flown since 2015, resupplying the ISS alongside SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon car. The launch of Progress MS-35 to the ISS would be the 188th total flight of a Roscosmos Progress car.
The present Expedition 75 crew is awaiting the launch of the NASA/SpaceX Crew-13 mission to the orbiting laboratory. The Crew-13 mission was initially scheduled to launch in mid-September; nonetheless, throughout routine pre-launch preparations, engineers found a leak within the spacecraft. SpaceX and NASA later introduced that they’d found an oxidizer leak and delayed the mission to carry out extra testing and full obligatory reworks. A brand new launch date has not been publicly introduced.
(Lead Picture: Soyuz 2.1b atop Web site 31/6 forward of the April 2026 launch of Progress MS-34. Credit score: Artem Pylaev)
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