PROGRESS-M48 TRANSPORT SPACECRAFT TO BE REPLACED BY ITS IMPROVED "DOUBLE"

MOSCOW, January 28, 2004. (RIA Novosti correspondent Alexander Kovalev) -- The Russian Mission Control Centre has reported that on Wednesday, January 28th, the Progress-M48 transport spacecraft whose service life is over is to be undocked from the International Space Station (ISS), taken off orbit, and sunk in the calculated region of the Pacific Ocean.

Progress, loaded with garbage, will go off the ISS in the automatic mode at 11.36 a.m. Moscow time. At 16.11 Moscow time the spacecraft, having made a few more revolutions in orbit, will receive a command to brake, after which it will enter the dense layers of Earth's atmosphere and burn there. Its fragments will plunge into water at the "cemetery of space ships" in the Pacific at approximately 16.55 Moscow time.

Progress-M48 will be replaced near the ISS docking port by its improved "double" - Progress M1-11, which is slated to be launched from Baikonur (the launching site in the south of Kazakhstan, which term of lease by Russia was recently extended to 2050) at 14,58 Moscow time on January 29th.

The transport spacecraft's docking in the automatic regime with the ISS is scheduled for 16.20 Moscow time on January 31st.