MOSCOW, February 22 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Progress M-17M resupply spacecraft will readjust the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, a Russian space industry source said.
“The space freighter’s engines will be started at 14:34 Moscow Time [10:34 GMT]. They will work for 276.7 seconds. As a result of the maneuver, the ISS’s orbit will be raised by about 1 kilometer,” the source told RIA Novosti.
Adjustments to the station's orbit are carried out regularly to compensate for the Earth's gravity and to facilitate the successful docking and undocking of spacecraft.
This time, the orbit readjustment is expected to create the best conditions for the Soyuz TMA-06M manned spacecraft’s undocking.
The Soyuz TMA-06M will bring Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin, as well as NASA astronaut Kevin Ford back to Earth on March 15.
