MOSCOW, July 31. /TASS/. The orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) was raised by more than 3 km ahead of the launch of the Soyuz MS-26 crewed spacecraft and the return of the Soyuz MS-25 capsule to Earth, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos said on Wednesday.
"The ISS is being prepared for a changeover: the launch of the Soyuz MS-26 crewed spacecraft and the return of the Soyuz MS-25," Roscosmos said in a statement.
After the maneuver, the space station’s average orbit was raised by 3.1 km to 418.1 km above the Earth’s surface. The maneuver was performed using the thrusters of the Progress MS-26 space freighter docked to the ISS. The thrusters were switched on at 12:51 p.m. Moscow time and operated for 1,233.3 seconds, it said.
The Soyuz MS-26 manned spacecraft is scheduled to launch atop a Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket to the orbital outpost from the Baikonur space center on September 11.
The basic crew of the 72nd long-term expedition to the space station comprises Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Donald Pettit.