European ATV-5 cargo spacecraft adjusts space station’s orbit

MOSCOW, August 27 (Itar-Tass) - Europe’s ATV-5 cargo spacecraft, docked with the International Space Station, switched its engines for some three minutes on Wednesday to raise the space station’s orbit by approximately one kilometer, the Russian Mission Control said. “The maneuver was conducted at 12:37 p.m. Moscow time [8:37 GMT],” the mission control said. “Boosters of the ATV-5 worked for 178.68 seconds.” Ariane 5 ES space carrier with ATV-5 “Georges Lemaitre” cargo spacecraft was launched to the ISS from the Guiana Space Centre, in Kourou, French Guiana, on July 29 and docked with the space station on August 12. The station’s orbit is adjusted regularly to ensure safe docking of the freighters and manned spacecraft as well as to avoid possible collision with space debris. The current adjustment of the station’s orbit was carried out to ensure the better conditions for the undocking of the Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft and the following docking of Soyuz TMA-14M, which is scheduled to blast off to the station from the Baikonur space center on September 26. Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft will bring to the Earth Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev, and US astronaut Steven Swanson. Soyuz TMA-14M is scheduled to bring to the space station Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyayev and Yelena Serova, and US astronaut Barry Wilmore. Learn more on itar-tass.com