MOSCOW, March 14. /TASS/. The orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) has been adjusted before the Soyuz crewed spacecraft reshuffle, scheduled for late March-early April, Roscosmos has said.
"The ISS is being readied for the arrival of a new crew. Today the orbit’s altitude was adjusted," the state-run corporation said in a statement.
The average altitude of the station's orbit increased by 2.8 km to 419.53 km above the Earth's surface. The maneuver was performed with the engines of the Progress MS-26 cargo spacecraft. They were turned on at 4:11 p.m. Moscow time (1:11 GMT) and burned for 1,096.7 seconds.
On March 21, the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft will deliver to the International Space Station the crew of the 21st visiting expedition: cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and Belarusian female cosmonaut Marina Vasilevskaya. Ivan Vagner (of Russia) and Anastasia Lenkova (of Belarus) are the standby crew. Vasilevskaya is a flight attendant for Belavia, and Lenkova a pediatric surgeon. NASA's female astronaut Tracy Dyson will travel to the station on the Soyuz, with Donald Pettit, the oldest active US astronaut, serving as her standby.
Novitsky and Vasilevskaya will stay on the ISS for about two weeks and return on April 2 on the Soyuz MS-24 with NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara, while Dyson's mission will last until September. She will return to Earth with Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko (TASS special correspondent on the ISS) and Nikolay Chub.
Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko (TASS special correspondent on the ISS), Nikolay Chub and Alexander Grebenkin, NASA astronauts Laurel O'Hara, Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick and Jeanette Epps are the current crew of the orbital outpost.