Russian Progress spacecraft delivers 3 tons of cargo to the ISS (video)

Russia's robotic Progress 96 cargo spacecraft met up with the space station today (Sept. 19).

Progress 96 launched atop a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday (Sept. 16), kicking off a three-day orbital chase of the International Space Station (ISS).

That chase came to an end today at 9:44 a.m. EDT (1344 GMT), when the freighter docked with the space-facing port of the ISS' Poisk module. The two spacecraft were flying 260 miles (418 kilometers) above the Black Sea at the time, according to NASA's docking webcast.

closeup of a cylindrical spacecraft against the blackness of space — Russia's Progress 96 cargo spacecraft arrives at the International Space Station on Sept. 19, 2026. (Image credit: NASA)

Progress 96 carried about 3 tons of food, fuel and other supplies for the occupants of the ISS.

There are currently seven of those folks: Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir and Anil Menon of NASA, the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot, and Pyotr Dubrov, Andrey Fedyaev and Anna Kikina of Russia's space agency, Roscosmos.

Progress 96 will stay attached to the ISS for about five months. It will then be loaded up with trash and sent to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

This is the ultimate fate of most ISS resupply spacecraft — every Progress, HTV-X vehicle (which is built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Cygnus (provided by Northrop Grumman). The only reusable freighter in the current fleet is SpaceX's Dragon capsule.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 9:55 a.m. ET on Sept. 19 with news of successful docking.

Michael Wall is the Spaceflight and Tech Editor for Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers human and robotic spaceflight, military space, and exoplanets, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.