The superfast scheme that allows crews to get to the International Space Station (ISS) in an hour and a half, began to be tested during the flight of the Progress MS-17 cargo vehicle, RIA Novosti reports with reference to the press service of the Roscosmos space corporation.
It is specified that the Progress MS-17 spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome on June 30, 2021, and moored to the ISS on July 2, 2021. At the stage of short-range guidance, the Progress MS-17 transport cargo vehicle entered the so-called “coelliptical orbit”, characterized by a constant altitude difference with the ISS orbit, in which it was about half a turn until the optimal impulse was fulfilled when switching to the station intercept trajectory.
It is noted that this approach is supposed to be used in a single-turn approachment scheme with the use of quasi-coplanar launch into the reference orbit, which allows transport vehicles to reach the ISS without additional power consumption in just 90-120 minutes after launch.
Ru-Main, 15.07.2021
