In accordance with the flight program of the International Space Station, on March 12, 2021, specialists from the TsNIIMash Mission Control Center (part of the Roscosmos State Corporation) corrected the altitude of its orbit. For this, the engines of the Progress MS-14 transport cargo vehicle docked to the Zvezda service module were automatically switched on at 22:09 Moscow time.
The orbit correction was carried out in full accordance with the calculated data. The spacecraft’s engines worked for 114 seconds, as a result of which the average altitude of the station’s orbit increased by 0.45 km and amounted to 419.7 km. This maneuver was performed to form ballistic conditions before the launch of the Soyuz MS-18 manned spacecraft, which is scheduled for April 2021. Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky, Pyotr Dubrov, as well as NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hai will go to the ISS.
Currently, the crew of the 64th long-term expedition, consisting of Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Ryzhikov and Sergei Kud-Sverchkov, as well as NASA astronauts Kathleen Rubins, Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi, is working on board the International Space Station. .