The Russian cargo ship delivered a fresh batch of fuel, food and other supplies to the ISS. On Tuesday Progress MS-09 was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakhstan). The unmanned spacecraft, loaded with almost 3 tons of supplies, docked with the station in automatic mode 4 hours after launch.
This is the first time that such a close approach has been used. Earlier, Progress ships spent about 6 hours or 2 days on a flight. Representatives of Roscosmos reported that a faster maneuver was made possible thanks to a new version of the Soyuz launch vehicle, noting that it is launching the spacecraft into orbit with higher accuracy. A new maneuver was attempted last year, but the attempt failed for technical reasons.
Now among the crew members are Andrew Fustel, Richard Arnold, Serina Aounier-Chancellor, Alexander Gerst, Oleg Artemyev and Sergey Prokopiev.
