Progress M-14M (russian: Прогресс М-14М, italic=yes), identified by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

as Progress 46P, is a

Progress Progress is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization have resulted, and by extension w ...

spacecraft which was used by

Roskosmos The State Space Corporation "Roscosmos" (russian: Государственная корпорация по космической деятельности «Роскосмос»), commonly known simply as Roscosmos (russian: Роскосмос) ...

to resupply the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ( ...

during 2012. The fourteenth

Progress-M Progress-M (russian: Прогресс-М, GRAU indices 11F615A55 and 11F615A60), also known as Progress 7K-TGM, is a Russian, previously Soviet spacecraft which is used to resupply space stations. It is a variant of the Progress spacecraft, or ...

11F615A60 spacecraft, it had the serial number 414 and was built by

RKK Energia PAO S. P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (russian: Ракетно-космическая корпорация «Энергия» им. С. П. Королёва, Raketno-kosmicheskaya korporatsiya "Energiya" im. S. P. Korolyov ...

. Upon its arrival in late January 2012, it delivered supplies to the

Expedition 30 Expedition 30 was the 30th long-duration mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The expedition's first three crew members – Dan Burbank, Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoli Ivanishin – arrived on the ISS aboard Soyuz TMA-22 on 16 ...

crew aboard the space station, where it remained docked until 19 April 2012.

Launch

Progress M-14M was launched at 23:06:40 UTC on 25 January 2012. It was launched from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, by a

Soyuz-U The Soyuz-U launch vehicle was an improved version of the original Soyuz rocket. Soyuz-U was part of the R-7 family of rockets based on the R-7 Semyorka missile. Members of this rocket family were designed by the TsSKB design bureau and cons ...

carrier rocket A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload (spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pads, supported by a launch control center and syste ...

. In preparation for the launch, the spacecraft was fuelled at Site 31 on 18 January 2012, before being moved to Site 254 for final assembly, and mating with the third stage and fairing. This was mated to the lower stages of the carrier rocket at Site 112 on 23 January 2012, and rolled out to the launch pad at 01:00 UTC on 24 January 2012.

Orbit

About 529 seconds after launch, the spacecraft separated from the

into a

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...

with a target perigee of , apogee of and 51.66° of

Orbital inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a reference plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object. For a satellite orbiting the Earth ...

. It spent a little over two days in free flight, during which time it conducted two main engine burns and a firing of its manoeuvring thrusters to raise its orbit before docking with the '' Pirs'' module of the International Space Station on 28 January 2012 at around 00:08:57 UTC; the docking port had been vacated by Progress M-13M on 23 January 2012. Progress M-14M undocked on 19 April 2012 at 11:04 UTC from the Pirs Module, making way for

Progress M-15M Progress M-15M (russian: Прогресс М-15М, italic=yes), identified by NASA as Progress 47P, is a Progress spacecraft used by Roskosmos to resupply the International Space Station during 2012. The fifteenth Progress-M 11F615A60 spacecraft ...

. Unlike most Progress departures, Progress M-14M will spend additional time on orbit in order to carry out the "Radar-Progress" experiment, sounding the ionospheric environment as modified by thruster firings. The experiment will be conducted by the Siberian Institute of Solar-Earth Physics of the

Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across ...

. The radar participating in the experiment is located in the Irkutsk region in southern

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive region, geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a ...

. The Progress M-14M spacecraft deorbited on 28 April 2012 at around 13:46 UTC and sank in the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

upon its reentry.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Progress M-14M Spacecraft launched in 2012 Progress (spacecraft) missions Spacecraft which reentered in 2012 Spacecraft launched by Soyuz-U rockets Supply vehicles for the International Space Station

Launch

Orbit

See also

References