Rocket with Progress MS-28 resupply ship installed on Baikonur launch pad

MOSCOW. Aug 12 (Interfax) - A Soyuz-2.1a rocket with the Progress MS-28 resupply ship to be launched on August 15 has been installed on a launch paid at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Roscosmos said on Monday.

"Today, a Soyuz-2.1a rocket with the Progress MS-28 resupply ship was transported to the launch pad on Area 31 of the Baikonur Cosmodrome," Roscosmos said.

The rocket was put in a vertical position, and specialists from Roscosmos enterprises continued to prepare it for launch, it said.

The launch of Progress MS-28 to the International Space Station is scheduled for 6:20 a.m. on August 15.

The ship will deliver over 2.5 tonnes of cargo, including 1,201 kilograms of equipment for station systems, kits for scientific experiments, clothes, food, medical and hygiene products for the crew, 950 kilograms of fuel for the station, 420 kilograms of drinking water for the cosmonauts, and 50 kilograms of nitrogen to replenish the station's atmosphere.

It will also bring an x-ray spectrometer for the All Sky Monitor experiment. It will be installed on the exterior of the Zvezda module of the ISS' Russian segment during a spacewalk.

The station is currently operated by a crew of nine, including Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and Alexander Grebenkin, NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps and Tracy Dyson, as well as NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams who arrived at the ISS in June by a new U.S. Starliner spacecraft.