ISS orbit adjusted before arrival of Soyuz MS-24 - Roscosmos

MOSCOW. July 5 (Interfax) - Russian specialists have adjusted the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) by burns of the Progress MS-22 resupply ship's engines to prepare for the arrival of the Soyuz MS-24 manned spaceship and the departure of Soyuz MS-23 planned for this fall, Russia's Roscosmos said on Wednesday.

"Engines of the Progress MS-22 resupply ship, latched on to the Russian Zvezda service module, were started at 12:07 a.m. Moscow time and ran for 1,130.8 seconds, providing an impetus of 1.85 meters per second," Roscosmos said.

"According to the tentative information from the Mission Control Center of the Central Research Institute for Machine Building (a unit of Roscosmos), an average altitude of the station's orbit grew by 3.25 kilometers to 417.9 kilometers as a result," it said.

Soyuz MS-24 is scheduled to fly to the ISS on September 15, 2023, with Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara onboard.

A total of 341 orbit adjustments, including 189 by burns of Progress engines, have been accomplished since the day the ISS was put into orbit.

Roscosmos also said that Soyuz MS-23 with Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio was due to land on September 27, 2023.

Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin and Andrei Fedyayev, NASA astronauts Francisco Rubio, Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan al-Neyadi operate the station at present.