The Russian multifunctional Nauka (Science) module has docked with the International Space Station (ISS), Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos announced Thursday.
The module successfully docked with the Zvezda service module on the Russian segment of the ISS today at 16:29 Moscow time (1329 GMT), it said.
Following its launch on a Proton-M carrier rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on July 21, the module embarked on an eight-day journey to the space station.
The long-awaited Nauka module will replace the Pirs docking module, and become the largest Russian component of the ISS and provide Russian cosmonauts onboard the space outpost with their own room and capacity for lab research and storage space for scientific equipment.
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NEW YORK, July 30. /TASS/. The launch of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) which was initially scheduled on July 30 has been postponed indefinitely after the Nauka module thrusters unexpectedly turned on after it docked with the ISS, NASA said in a statement on Thursday.
ReplyDelete"NASA and Boeing have decided to stand down from Friday’s launch attempt of the agency’s Orbital Flight Test-2 mission. Currently, launch teams are assessing the next available opportunity. The move allows the International Space Station team time to continue working checkouts of the newly arrived Roscosmos’ Nauka module and to ensure the station will be ready for Starliner’s arrival," the statement reads.
After the Nauka module docked with the ISS, its thrusters suddenly turned on at 19:45 Moscow time and rotated the station’s normal orientation by 45 degrees. The crew was not in danger. Roscosmos told TASS that the Nauka module was being switched into ‘docked with the ISS’ mode. Remaining fuel in the module is also being dealt with.