On April 30, Roscosmos State Corporation announced that the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) was adjusted to form ballistic conditions before the launch of the Progress MS-23 cargo spacecraft.
“As a result, according to preliminary data, the average altitude of the station’s orbit increased by 1.95 km and amounted to 417.12 km,” the report says.
It is noted that the maneuver was carried out using the engines of the Progress MS-22 cargo ship docked to the station. They were turned on at 03:31 Moscow time and worked for 716.8 seconds.
Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin and Andrey Fedyaev, NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen, Frank Rubio, Woody Hoburg and astronaut from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sultan al-Neyadi are currently on duty on the ISS.
According to Roskosmos, the launch of the Progress MS-23 cargo spacecraft is scheduled for May 24.
Earlier, on April 25, Director General of Roscosmos Yuri Borisov notified foreign partners in the ISS about the extension of Russia’s participation in the project until 2028.
On April 23, it was reported that the spacewalk under the Russian program was tentatively rescheduled for early May. Initially, the release was supposed to take place on April 26. The transfer is associated with the need for a more detailed study of the exit tasks.
Prior to this, on April 6, the Soyuz MS-23 manned transport vehicle with three cosmonauts on board undocked from the Russian Poisk module of the ISS.
