A Russian cargo ship will launch towards the International Space Station early Thursday morning (May 30) and you can watch the action live.
The robotic freighter Progress 88 is expected to lift off atop a Soyuz rocket from the Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday at 5:43 a.m. EDT (0943 GMT; 2:43 p.m. local time in Baikonur).
You can watch the launch live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA; Coverage begins at 5:15 a.m. EDT (0915 GMT).
Related: Facts about Roscosmos, the Russian space agency
Progress 88 is packed with approximately 3 tons of food, propellant and other supplies for the astronauts living aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
If all goes according to plan, the freighter will deliver this bounty on Saturday (June 1). It will dock in the space-facing port of the laboratory’s Poisk module at 7:47 a.m. EDT (1147 GMT) that day, according to NASA officials. You can also watch this rendezvous live; Coverage begins Saturday at 7:00 AM EDT (11:00 GMT).
Progress 88 will stay on the ISS for approximately six months. Astronauts will then fill the cargo ship with waste and it will sail back to Earth, eventually burning up in our planet’s atmosphere.
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Three robotic spacecraft currently transport cargo to the ISS: Progress, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus vehicle, and SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon capsule. Cygnus and Progress are designed for single use, while Dragon is reusable; it returns safely to Earth for parachute-assisted ocean splashdowns.
There are currently two cargo ships docked at the ISS – Progress 87 and a Cygnus – and Progress 86 just left on Tuesday (May 28). The orbiting laboratory also currently houses two crewed spacecraft: the Crew Dragon that flies SpaceX’s Crew-8 astronaut mission for NASA and a Russian Soyuz vehicle.
