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Station cargo vehicle set for launch Wednesday

The next cargo craft bound for the International Space Station will begin its journey Wednesday.

The ISS Progress 30 cargo vehicle, carrying more than 2.6 tons of food, fuel and supplies for the Expedition 17 crew, is set to launch Wednesday at 3:50 p.m. EDT from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The vehicle was rolled out to the launch pad Monday for final pre-launch preparations.

Image above: The ISS Progress 30 cargo craft rolls out to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday. Credit: Roscosmos

To prepare for the arrival and docking of the Progress on Friday, Commander Sergei Volkov and Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko, RN3DX, practiced contingency manual rendezvous techniques in the Zvezda service module.

Flight Engineer Greg Chamitoff, KD5PKZ, worked with a Japanese educational experiment, filming the flow of ink through a water sphere suspended in microgravity with an HDTV camera.

The Progress 29 cargo craft, which undocked from the station Sept. 1, conducted a deorbit burn Monday at 4:47 p.m. and burned in the Earth's atmosphere.

The unpiloted ISS Progress 30 resupply craft is scheduled to automatically dock to the aft port of the Zvezda service module at 4:01 p.m. CDT, Friday, Sept. 12.

NASA TV will have live coverage of the Progress' arrival beginning at 3:30 p.m., with commentary and any downlink television that is available. NASA TV will not broadcast the launch.

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv