Progress M-3 () was a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

uncrewed cargo spacecraft which was launched in 1990 to resupply the

Mir ''Mir'' (, ; ) was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, first by the Soviet Union and later by the Russia, Russian Federation. ''Mir'' was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to ...

space station. The twentieth of sixty four

Progress Progress is movement towards a perceived refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. It is central to the philosophy of progressivism, which interprets progress as the set of advancements in technology, science, and social organization effic ...

flights to visit Mir, it was a

Progress-M Progress-M (, 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, originally built in the late 1 ...

11F615A55 spacecraft, and had the

serial number A serial number (SN) is a unique identifier used to ''uniquely'' identify an item, and is usually assigned incrementally or sequentially. Despite being called serial "numbers", they do not need to be strictly numerical and may contain letters ...

203. It carried supplies including food, water and oxygen for the EO-6 crew aboard Mir, as well as equipment for conducting scientific research, and fuel for adjusting the station's orbit and performing manoeuvres. Progress M-3 was launched at 23:10:57 GMT on 28 February 1990, atop a Soyuz-U2 carrier rocket flying from Site 1/5 at the

Baikonur Cosmodrome The Baikonur Cosmodrome is a spaceport operated by Russia within Kazakhstan. Located in the Kazakh city of Baikonur, it is the largest operational space launch facility in terms of area. All Russian Human spaceflight, crewed spaceflights are l ...

. It docked with the aft port of the ''

Kvant-1 Kvant-1 (; English: Quantum-I/1) (37KE) was the first module to be attached in 1987 to the Mir Core Module, which formed the core of the Soviet space station ''Mir''. It remained attached to ''Mir'' until the entire space station was deorbited i ...

'' module at 01:04:32 GMT on 3 March. During the 56 days for which it was docked with Mir, the station was in an orbit of around , with 51.6 degrees of

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 Eart ...

. Progress M-3 undocked at 20:24:43 GMT on 27 April to make way for

Progress 42 Progress 42 () was a Soviet unmanned Progress cargo spacecraft, which was launched in May 1990 to resupply the Mir space station. Launch Progress 42 launched on 5 May 1990 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakh SSR. It used a Soyuz-U2 roc ...

. It was deorbited at 00:00:00 GMT the next day. It burned up in the atmosphere over the

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

, with any remaining debris landing in the ocean at around 00:52 GMT.

References

1990 in the Soviet Union Progress (spacecraft) missions Spacecraft launched in 1990 {{USSR-spacecraft-stub

See also

References