ISS Fan Club

After the successful launch of a new Progress cargo carrier, the Expedition 17 crew members aboard the International Space Station are making final preparations for its arrival.

P29 launched to the station at 4:22 p.m. EDT Wednesday with more than 2.3 tons of fuel, air, water, propellant and other supplies and equipment aboard.

P29 began its journey to the station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and is scheduled to dock at the Earth-facing port of the station's Zarya module Friday about 5:30 p.m. It replaces the trash-filled P28 which was undocked from the Pirs docking compartment on April 7 and destroyed on re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

+ Read more about the Progress 29 launch at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition17/progress29launch.html

To prepare for Friday’s new arrival, Commander Sergei Volkov and Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko participated in a conference with ground controllers to review Progress docking procedures.

Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman made updates to the station’s emergency procedures manual. These updates are sent to the station electronically. They also are printed out aboard. They are designed to help crew members deal with emergencies that may occur on the station.

In addition, the crew members completed various regular station maintenance duties and performed their daily physical exercise routines to counteract the effects of weightlessness in space. They also reviewed transfer procedures for next month’s expected arrival of space shuttle Discovery and the STS-124 crew.

Source http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html