All the dynamic operations leading to rendezvous and docking were performed under supervision of the Technical Management (Technical Manager is the President of RSC Energia after S.P. Korolev, Designer General V.A. Lopota) Flight control specialists and members of ISS Prime Crew 20 (ISS-20) joined efforts to provide performance of the operations.

Approach to the space station, its fly-around, station-keeping of the space vehicle relative to the station were performed in an automatic mode.

According to the decision taken by the Technical Management in the interests of the optimized docking process with due regard for mutual position of the space vehicle and station, final phase of approach was conducted by the ISS Commander Gennady Padalka in a manually-operated mode.

The docking port located on the ISS Russian Segment (RS) Service Module Zvezda onboard systems section was contacted at 15:12:10 Moscow Time.

Present at Moscow Mission Control Center (MCC-M) during the final operations of the space vehicle redezvous and docking with the ISS were: representatives of the State Commission (the head of Roscosmos A.N. Perminov as the Chairman), Roscosmos, NASA, subcontracting enterprises and organizations throughout the industry, the corporation managers and specialists.

According to telemetry data and reports from the ISS crew, the onboard systems of the space station and space vehicle operate normally.

After completion of the docking, the questions from the reporters of Russian information agencies and TV companies were answered by the President of RSC Energia, Designer General V.A. Lopota and RSC Energia First Deputy General Designer, Flight Director V.A. Soloviev.

+ The space vehicle delivered to the station around 2.6 tons of cargoes, including: supplies of propellant, pressure oxygen and air, food, scientific equipment, additional equipment for the RS and USOS Modules, onboard documentation and parcels from the relatives.

+ At the rendezvous and docking stage, mission control and monitoring the space vehicle and station systems status were performed by the Lead Operations Control Team (LOCT) consisting of the specialists from RSC Energia, MCC-M and industry-wide enterprises.

+ ISS flies in near-Earth orbit with a minimum altitude of 345.7 km, maximum altitude of 360.9 km. Its orbital period is 91.4 min.

+ Members of Prime Crew 20 (ISS-20) are currently working onboard the ISS: Russian cosmonauts G. Padalka (Commmander) and R. Romanenko, US astronaut M. Barratt, European astronaut F. de Winne, Canadian astronaut R. Thirsk and US astronaut T. Kopra.

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Space Station News at Space-Travel.Com

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