Having 2 Spacecraft in Orbit Risky – Russian Source

MOSCOW. Jan 19 (Interfax-AVN) – Russia’s bringing forward the planned launch of a supply spacecraft to the International Space Station to February 5 from February 7 at NASA’s request has given ballistic control problems to the Russian mission control, a space industry source said.

“There will simultaneously be two Progresses [Progress spacecraft] in orbit in the period from the 5th to the 7th of February: one will be flying to the ISS and the other, after undocking from the station on February 4, will be in orbit as a space lab. Yet there exists only one channel for controlling these vehicles, and consequently there is a danger of loss of control,” the source told Interfax-AVN.

Normally a supply craft would be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan after its predecessor had undocked from the ISS and had been sunk in a specially designated Pacific area 3,000 kilometers from New Zealand, he said.

“Russian ballistic specialists are having to urgently deal with the task of moving the two Progresses as far apart in orbit as possible so that control signals from ground-based centers reach the right destination,” the source said.

Progress M-63, which is to be launched on February 5, and Progress M-62, the other craft, are not fitted with identification systems. This means one of them may follow commands that are meant for the other, and this may cause one of them to fall to the Earth in an uncontrolled way, “though there is an extremely low probability of such a scenario,” the source said.

The reason for the request of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration for changing the date for launching Progress M- 63 was the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis from the Canaveral space center in Florida scheduled for the evening of February 7.

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