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Launch Thread: Progress MS-05

Quetzal

A little to the left and slightly out of focus.
Premium Member
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Good morning from RF mission control! Get some Red Bull ready because this will be a late one. Early tomorrow morning Roscosmos will be launching Progress MS-05, a resupply mission to the International Space Station. This will also mark the last launch of the Soyuz-U rocket.

Current Schedule Launch Time: 00:58 EST 02/21/2017
Launching Agency: Roscosmos
Payload: Progress MS-05 - ISS Supples
Launch Vehicle: Soyuz-U
Live Countdown
Stream

Production of this Soyuz rocket variant was discontinued in April 2015 following disintegration of political relations between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, where portions of the Soyuz-U’s guidance system was built.

With Progress MS-05, the Soyuz-U will complete a historic career – with the rocket being the longest-serving launch vehicle in history after entering service on 18 May 1973.

The first flight of Soyuz-U carried Kosmos 559, a Zenit military surveillance satellite.

Since that time, the Soyuz-U has conducted 785 launches, 764 of which were successes and 22 of which were failures – including the Soyuz T-10a crewed mission which caught fire on the launch pad with the crew onboard (with the crew escaping to safety via the Soyuz’s launch escape system).

For its historical numbers, the Soyuz-U fire on Soyuz T-10a, which occurred on 26 September 1983, is counted as a failure but not as a launch as the vehicle never actually left the pad.

Thus, there is a mismatch in the total number of mission successes/failures when compared to the total number of launches/flights – with 764 successes and 22 failures equalling 786 against 785 launches.

To this end, Progress MS-05 is the 787th scheduled mission of the Soyuz-U, but will be the 786th launch of the rocket.

In all, Soyuz-U was designed in the late-1960s/early-1970s as an upgraded – hence the “U” designation – version of the original Soyuz rocket.

It is part of the R-7 family of rockets, which are based on the R-7 Semyorka missile, and was primarily constructed at the Progress Factory in Samara, Russia.

While most of its missions have been uncrewed, Soyuz-U was used to launch crewed Soyuz missions.

The rocket’s first crewed flight, Soyuz 16, occurred in December 1974. Soyuz 16 was the USSR’s (Union of Soviet Socialist Republic’s) dress rehearsal for the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Program flight.

Following the success of Soyuz 16, Soyuz-U launched the Soyuz 19 mission in July 1975 as the USSR half of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Program.

Soyuz-U also launched the Soyuz 21 mission, the first flight of a crew to the Salyut 5 space station.

In all, Soyuz-U crewed flights continued until 25 April 2002, when the rocket was used to launch the Soyuz TM-34 spacecraft with a three-person crew for a short-duration stay aboard the International Space Station.

TM-34 not only marked the final use of the Soyuz-U for crew transportation missions, but also the final flight of the TM-series Soyuz.

With a career spanning 43 years 9 months 4 days, Soyuz-U has the longest lifetime of any orbital rocket and holds the record for most launches in a single calendar year of 47 flights, which occurred in 1979.

Moreover, it is one of the most reliable rockets in history, with a total mission success rate of 97.2% (counting Soyuz T-10a but not MS-05’s scheduled launch).

Source

The Progress resupply vehicle is an automated, unpiloted version of the Soyuz spacecraft that is used to bring supplies and fuel to the International Space Station. The Progress also has the ability to raise the Station's altitude and control the orientation of the Station using the vehicle's thrusters.

Both the Progress M and M1 versions have a pressurized Cargo Module to carry supplies, a Refueling Module that holds fuel tanks containing propellant and pressurized gases, and an Instrumentation/Propulsion Module where the Progress systems equipment and thrusters are located.

The Progress spacecraft is launched to the Space Station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz rocket. It normally docks to the end of the Station's Zvezda Service Module, but it can also dock to the bottom of the Pirs Docking Compartment.

Source

See you folks tonight/in the morning! Let's go Progress! :D
 
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