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Progress M-23M resupply spacecraft to blast off from Baikonur on Wednesday

The spacecraft is to deliver more than 25 tonnes of supplies of various purpose to the ISS

© EPA/ИТАР-ТАСС/ROSCOSMOS PRESS SERVICE

BAIKONUR, April 09, /ITAR-TASS/. The Russian resupply spacecraft Progress M-23M is to be launched to the International Space Station (ISS) from Baikonur spaceport's Site 1 (Gagarin's one) on Wednesday, an official of Roscosmos (Federal Space Agency) told Itar-Tass.

"The liftoff of the carrier rocket Soyuz-U with payload transport spacecraft Progress M-23M is scheduled for 19:25, Moscow time," a Roscosmos press service official said.

According to the press service, "the spacecraft is to deliver more than 25 tonnes of supplies of various purpose to the ISS: fueld to sustain the ISS orbit; equipment to fit the Station up; food, water, air for cosmonauts, as well as pallets with research equipment for the conduct of experiments".

The spacecraft is to dock with the ISS six hours after liftoff.

The process of the six-hour flight (during which the spacecraft makes four revolutions around the EarthNote by Itar-Tass) was fitst tried out in August 2012 by means of the Progresd M-16M spacecraft. Until that time all resupply spacecraft of this series had traveled to the ISS according to a 48-hour diagram.

Currently working in orbit are Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Tyurin, Alexander Skvortsov, Oleg Artemyev, American astronauts Richard Mastracchio and Steve Swanson, as well as Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata.

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