Monday, April 23, 2012

NASA: Progress Docks To Station, Crew 30 Preps for Departure

The Expedition 30 crew members pose for an in-flight crew portrait in the European Space Agency's "Edoardo Amaldi" Automated Transfer Vehicle-3. Credit NASA

The ISS Progress 47 cargo craft docked to the International Space Station’s Pirs docking compartment Sunday at 10:39 a.m. EDT.

The Russian resupply craft replenishes the Expedition 30 crew with 2.8 tons of food, fuel and supplies.

The cargo delivery includes 1,988 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen and air, 926 pounds of water and 2,703 pounds of spare parts, resupply items and experiment hardware.

Aboard the station Monday, Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin continued to prepare for their return to Earth, packing items and conducting a review of undocking and descent procedures for the Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft that brought them to the orbiting laboratory back in November.

The trio is scheduled to undock in the Soyuz on Friday at 4:19 a.m. and land in Kazakhstan a little over three hours later ending Expedition 30.

Remaining aboard the station will be Flight Engineers Don Pettit, Andre Kuipers and Oleg Kononenko, who will become the Expedition 31 crew.

They will be joined by Flight Engineers Gennady Padalka, Joe Acaba and Sergei Revin, who are currently at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, preparing for their launch on May 14.

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