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ISS orbit to be raised by 600 meters

January 17, 2018, 6:36 pm

MOSCOW -- The orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) would be raised by approximately 600 meters on Wednesday, a Russian Mission Control Center official said.

"Engines of the Zvezda service module will be switched on for 22 seconds, according to preliminary estimates, the average height of the ISS orbit will be increased by 0.6 kilometers, to 404.4 kilometers," the source said.

The maneuver is scheduled to take place at 23:15 Moscow time on Wednesday.

"The aim of the readjustment is to create ballistic conditions enabling the orbiting of the Progress-MS-08 space freighter," the Mission Control Center official said.

The space freighter’s launch is scheduled for Feb. 11, 2018. It was earlier reported that the Progress MS-08 resupply ship would be the first cargo spacecraft to fly to the ISS using a two-rotation scheme, which was a three-hour travel from the blastoff to the docking with the space station.

It was originally planned that a Progress MS-07 cargo spacecraft for the first time would perform its flight to the world’s sole orbiter under a three-hour scheme, with two revolutions around the Earth’s orbit. But flight was finally carried out under a two-day scheme. (TASS)

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