Russian controllers sent a new automated Progress supply spacecraft toward the International Space Station on Saturday. Launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the Progress 22 will have the distinction – at least for a while after its unloading – of serving as a closet rather than a garbage can for the orbiting laboratory.
Progress 22, which is expected to dock with the station on Monday, is carrying about 2.5 tons of equipment and supplies, including more than 1,900 pounds of propellant, just over 100 pounds of air and oxygen, almost 250 pounds of water and almost 2,860 pounds of dry cargo.
Its sister cargo carrier Progress 20 was undocked from the station on June 19. Russian controllers de-orbited the drone craft and destroyed it with its load of trash and station discards during atmospheric re-entry.
Progress 21, which arrived at the station April 23, remains at the aft docking port of the Zvezda service module. It is scheduled to be undocked and deorbited on Sept. 13.
Progress 22 will dock at the Russian Pirs compartment. Plans call for it to provide additional stowage space, rather than act as a trash receptacle. Many items eventually to be stowed aboard will be delivered by Discovery on STS-121, scheduled to launch on July 1.
The station crew will begin unloading Progress 22 only after Discovery’s departure.
The Progress series is similar in appearance and some design elements to the Soyuz spacecraft, which brings crew members to the station, serves as a lifeboat while they are there and returns them to Earth. The aft module, the instrumentation and propulsion module, is nearly identical.
The second of the three Progress sections is a refueling module, and the third, uppermost as the Progress sits on the launch pad, is a cargo module. On the Soyuz, the descent module, where the crew is seated on launch and which returns them to Earth, is the middle module and the third is called the orbital module.
