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Space station’s orbit raised ahead of Soyuz manned spacecraft’s arrival

As preliminary data suggest, the ISS orbit was raised by 3.4 km to 419.41 km above the Earth’s surface

MOSCOW, August 28. /TASS/. The orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) was raised ahead of the arrival of the Soyuz MS-26 manned spacecraft and the landing of the Soyuz MS-25 capsule, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos announced on Wednesday.

"Today the orbit of the International Space Station has been adjusted to provide for the launch of the Soyuz MS-26 manned spacecraft and the landing of the Soyuz MS-25 spaceship scheduled for September," Roscosmos said in a statement.

As preliminary data suggest, the ISS orbit was raised by 3.4 km to 419.41 km above the Earth’s surface. The maneuver was performed by firing the thrusters of the docked Progress MS-28 resupply ship at 4:46 a.m. Moscow time (1:46 a.m. GMT) for 1,075.42 seconds, it specified.

Over the period of the ISS operation, the space station’s orbit has been adjusted 364 times, including 206 times with the help of Progress cargo spacecraft thrusters, Roscosmos said.

Currently, Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko who is also a TASS special reporter in space, Nikolay Chub and Alexander Grebenkin, NASA astronauts Mathew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps and Tracy Dyson and their crew mates Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams who have arrived at the orbital outpost on the first Boeing Starliner crewed flight are working aboard the ISS.

The Soyuz MS-26 manned spacecraft is set to launch to the ISS on September 11. The crewed spaceship will deliver Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner (a TASS special correspondent in space) and NASA astronaut Donald Pettit to the orbital outpost.

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