Home delivery – fresh apples arrive for Major Tim
WHILE those of us with our feet planted firmly on Earth prepared for Christmas Day by overloading our cupboards with food and drink, a similar scene appears to have played out on board the International Space Station (ISS).
A photograph posted on Twitter yesterday by Tim Peake, the British astronaut, captured the arrival earlier this week of Progress MS-1 – a Russian-operated spacecraft stuffed with 2.8 tons of food, fuel and general supplies.
“Our new addition to #ISS this week – Progress resupply and fresh apples!” Major Peake wrote on Twitter, alongside an image of Progress MS-1 affixed to the ISS’s Pirs module – one of two Russian-operated docking compartments on the space station.
Progress MS-1, which weighs 7.25 tons, is scheduled to spend the next seven months docked at the ISS before leaving the space station in July 2016.
During its stay the craft will use its thrusters to perform reboost manoeuvres, which allow the astronauts to reposition the space station.
It will also provide storage for the additional supplies of food, water and fuel it brought with it.
When these supplies are exhausted, Progress MS-1 will become a giant rubbish bin filled with debris from the ISS before eventually being released into space next summer. Progress MS-1 is the first resupply craft to dock on the ISS since Major Peake arrived on Dec 15 as part of a threeman crew in a European Space Agency operation code-named Principia, which is scheduled to last for six months.
The RKK Energia-manufactured craft, which was sent by the Russian Federal Space Agency, left Earth on Dec 21 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and took two days to reach its destination.