ISS orbit adjusted before Soyuz MS-22 descent

MOSCOW. Feb 20 (Interfax) - The orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) has been adjusted by burns of the Progress MS-22 resupply ship's engines ahead of the Soyuz MS-22's descent, the Russian state corporation Roscosmos said in a statement on its website on Monday.

"Engines of the Progress MS-22 resupply ship were started at 7:20 a.m. today. They ran for 958.32 seconds and gave an impetus of 1.8 meters per second. As a result, the average altitude of the orbit's station reached 418.9 kilometers above the surface of our planet," Roscosmos said.

Roscosmos head Yury Borisov said on February 13 that an unmanned launch of the Soyuz MS-23 spaceship to the ISS as a replacement for the faulty Soyuz MS-22 had been delayed until the first days of March for testing the thermal regulation system.

Soyuz MS-23 will replace Soyuz MS-22 with a damaged radiator.

The council of chief designers proposed that a state commission authorize an unmanned launch of Soyuz MS-23 to the ISS on February 24, Roscosmos said on Saturday.

The crew consisting of Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio will return to the Earth in fall by Soyuz MS-23.