MOSCOW. April 1 (Interfax) - The orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) will be lifted by 360 meters before the arrival of the Soyuz MS-18 spaceship to be launched on April 9, the Roscosmos state corporation said in a statement on Thursday.
"The engines of the Progress MS-14 resupply ship docked with the Zvezda service module will be automatically started at 3:14 p.m. Moscow time. They will give an impetus of 0.21 meters per second. The ship's engines will be running for 129.3 seconds, which will increase the average orbit altitude by 0.36 kilometers to 419.8 kilometers," Roscosmos said.
The planned adjustment of the ISS orbit was reported on March 22, but its precise parameters were not mentioned then.
Russia's Soyuz MS-18 spaceship will fly to the ISS on April 9, 2021, with Oleg Novitsky, Pyotr Dubov, and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei onboard.
Currently, the ISS is manned by crew commander, Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergei Ryzhikov, Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergei Kud-Sverchkov, NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins, as well as NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi who came to the ISS onboard the newest U.S. piloted spaceship Crew Dragon of the SpaceX company.