Watch Russia Launch Its Fastest Space Station Cargo Flight Yet on Thursday!

News
By
( )
published
A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying the Progress 68 cargo ship stands atop its launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan ahead of a scheduled Oct. 12, 2017 launch. The spacecraft will make a 3.5-hour flight to the International Space Station.
A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying the Progress 68 cargo ship stands atop its launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan ahead of a scheduled Oct. 12, 2017 launch. The spacecraft will make a 3.5-hour flight to the International Space Station. (Image credit: RSC Energia)

The Russian space agency Roscosmos is about to make history with its fastest cargo flight ever to the International Space Station, launching early Thursday (Oct. 12), and you can watch it live online.

Roscosmos will launch a Souyuz rocket carrying the robotic cargo ship Progress 38 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kasakhstan at 5:32 a.m. EDT (0932 GMT). The cargo ship's superfast trip will bring it to the orbiting lab at 8:56 a.m. EDT (1256 GMT). Total elapsed time from launch to docking will be 3 hours, 24 minutes. You can watch the launch live here, courtesy of NASA TV, beginning at 5:15 a.m. EDT (0915 GMT).

Russia's uncrewed Progress space vehicles are workhorse freighters for the International Space Station. Until recent years, the vehicles, took about two days to reach the space station, as do the crewed Soyuz space capsules that have a similar appearance.

But in 2013, Roscosmos cut that flight time for Progress vehicles — and later, the crewed Soyuz capsules — down to about 6 hours, with the spacecraft orbiting Earth four times on their way to the International Space Station. During Thursday's flight, Progress 68 will complete just two orbits of Earth before linking up with the space station. If successful, the streamlined flight plan could cut the time it takes astronauts and cosmonauts to reach the station on future flights, NASA officials said.

"They're starting with cargo," NASA spokesman Gary Jordan told Space.com of the Roscosmos flight plan. "Eventually, if everything checks out, it could be transferred to crew launches."

Progress 68 is packed with nearly 3 tons (2.7 metric tons) of food, fuel and supplies for the Expedition 53 crew on the International Space Station. The crew consists of U.S. astronauts Randy Bresnik, Joe Acaba and Mark Vande Hei (all of NASA); Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazanskiy; and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

Tariq Malik
Tariq Malik
Editor-in-Chief

Tariq is the Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001, first as an intern and staff writer, and later as an editor. He covers human spaceflight, exploration and space science, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009 and Editor-in-Chief in 2019. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering education and city beats in La Habra, Fullerton and Huntington Beach. In October 2022, Tariq received the Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting from the National Space Club Florida Committee. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast with space historian Rod Pyle on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.