Increase ISS trajectory to catch Soyuz train

The orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) on October 24 will be raised by nearly one kilometer to ensure the safety of the Soyuz spacecraft to bring three astronauts about to fly to work. on the station, RIA Novosti leads the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos).

The Russian Mission Control Center will adjust the ISS trajectory by using the ATV-4 transport propulsion engine called Albert Einstein of the European Space Agency (ESA).

The US $ 100 billion International Space Station currently has six working people - (Photo: NASA)

The ship Albert Einstein was left by ESA at the Kourou Space Center in French Guiana on June 5, carrying 6.6 tons of goods including water, food, clothes, oxygen, fuel . to provide astronauts on ISS.

This fourth European transport ship connects with ISS on June 15. In addition to the mission of supplying goods to ISS and removing waste, the ATV fleet also performs an important task to help push the station to a higher orbit by means of the ship.

The engines of the European transport ship will begin to start at 17: 18 minutes on October 24 (VN time) and maintain for 256.6 seconds to bring the ISS up by about 900 meters, Roscosmos said. .

After this last mission, the Albert Einstein ship will leave the space station on October 28, so that in early November, it will end its mission by "burying itself" in the Pacific Ocean.

According to Roscosmos, the adjustment of the ISS's trajectory this time is to compensate for the lack of station height due to the gravity of the earth, thereby facilitating the connection of the Soyuz TMA spacecraft. -11M brought three astronauts to ISS in November.

Three astronauts of the Soyuz TMA-11M ship are about to be sent to ISS (left to the left): Koichi Wakata, Mikhail Tyurin and Rick Mastracchio - (Photo: AFP)

Russia's Soyuz TMA-11M ships with astronauts Koichi Wakata (JAXA), Mikhail Tyurin (Roscosmos) and Rick Mastracchio (NASA Aeronautics and Space Agency) departed on November 7 to begin the 190-day mission in space.

After leaving the launch pad at Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Soyuz TMA-11M takes only six hours to dock at the ISS. This will be the fourth consecutive "express" flight that takes people to ISS Roscosmos, since the first trip in March, compared to the usual two-day journey.

With six hours of flying, the Soyuz TMA-11M will only take 4 laps around the Earth's orbit to reach and connect to the ISS, compared to the previous 30 rounds.

Currently on ISS, six working astronauts including three astronauts brought by Soyuz TMA-09M in late May are Fyodor Yurchikhin (Roscosmos), Karen Nyberg (NASA) and Luca Parmitano (ESA) and three people. Soyuz TMA-10M posted by the end of September was Oleg Kotov, Sergey Ryazanskiy (Roscosmos) and Mike Hopkins (NASA).

As planned, the Soyuz TMA-09M leaves the station on November 10. At that time, three Soyuz TMA-10M astronauts in combination with three Soyuz TMA-11M astronauts will become the 38th ISS International Fleet, with the commander of Oleg Kotov.