MOSCOW, February 7. /TASS/. The Progress MS-20 space freighter carrying junk and spent equipment from the International Space Station (ISS) undocked from the Zvezda module of the ISS Russian segment, Roscosmos said in a live broadcast on Tuesday.
The Progress MS-20 cargo ship is set to fire its thrusters at 11:04 a.m. Moscow time to perform a three-minute deorbiting maneuver. The spacecraft is expected to re-enter the dense layers of the atmosphere at 11:37 a.m. Moscow time and eight minutes later its non-combustible fragments will splash down in the non-navigable part of the Pacific Ocean, 2,400 km from New Zealand’s city of Wellington and 7,500 km from Santiago in Chile.
During its stay on the ISS, the Progress MS-20 space freighter helped the station avoid collision with space debris on four occasions (June 16, October 17, October 25 and December 21, 2022) and performed seven routine orbit adjustment maneuvers (August 10, August 25, September 15, October 1 and November 30, 2022, and also January 18 and February 3 this year).
The Progress MS-20 was launched from the Baikonur spaceport on June 3, 2022. It delivered 2.5 tons of cargo to the ISS, including equipment, life support expendables, medical control and sanitation means, outfits and food for cosmonauts, as well as propellant, potable water and compressed nitrogen. The space freighter also delivered a 3D printer, a miniature electric guitar and violin strings to the ISS.