ISSCOM 2 May 2010 (070)

28th of April 2010, launch of the Progress M - 05M.

After the departure of the freighter Pr M – 03M the Pirs docking port of the ISS was free for the arrival of the Pr M – 05M.

The launch of this ship took place on 28th of April 2010 at 17.15.08 UTC. In view of the late hour in which the first passes for my position could be expected I did not try to monitor the beacon/telemetry frequencies. The purpose of trying to pick up transmissions of such a freighter is to be sure that the ship is still alive.

29th of April 2010

Pr M- 05M orbit 18

2008 UTC AOS on 166.141 mc/s 2013 UTC LOS.

30th of April 2010

PrM – 05M orbit 35

2141 UTC AOS on 166.141 mc/s 2146 UTC LOS.

1st of May 2010

Approach and docking of the PrM – 05M at the ISS. Orbit ISS 65616 Orbit Progress 49

Ultimately all went well, but not as usual we experienced during operations like that. The window for the pass within my range were between 1821 and 1826UTC. To monitor how the Russians under the direction of Kotov followed the approach I had tuned in on the VHF frequency of the Zvezda module. Kotov was ready to take over the control of the Progress manually if the system Kurs should fail. And sure enough this happened! Via NASA TV could be heard how in a distance of 1000 Meters had to switch over to the system TORU for manual control. There seemed to be a little bit of confusion because of the fact that the Kurs signals now and then showed up for a while. So I was not sure whether they were trying to check if the use of Kurs could be possible , but Kotov continued the manual control.

At 1826UTC Kotov could be heard in the communications with TsUP Moscow on VHF-1. Kotov reported a distance of 40 Meters, which Kornienko had determined and on the background could be heard how he told this to Kotov. In this period Kurs signals could be heard. (These signals also could be heard via NASA TV)

Before the calculated LOS time (1828UTC) the 143.625 mc/s transmitter was switched off and long before the planned time the docking (soft mate) took place.

This was at the Pirs docking port 18.30.21UTC. (And maybe witty to memorize that the word Pirs is derived from the Dutch word Pier - landing-stage).

After the successful docking followed the normal procedures such as the establishing the hard-mate, the air-seal checks, the deactivating of the Tory system and so on.

During the following passes within my range they did not use the 143.625 mc/s anymore. During the pass in orbit 65617 the Telemetry transmitter of the Progress could be heard for a while.

And friends: don’t forget to log in on www.chrisvandenberg.com, where my autobiography meanwhile advanced up to and including Paragraph 20.

Chris van den Berg, NL-9165