Flight Engineers Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin are resting on the International Space Station today as they will be testing Progress 62’s TORU, tele-robotically operated rendezvous system early Friday morning.

The Progress 62 vehicle will automatically undock from the International Space Station’s Pirs Docking Compartment early Friday morning at 1:36 AM EDT / 5:32 UTC and take approximately 30 minutes to rendezvous and re-dock with the ISS, with capture scheduled for 2:10 AM EDT / 6:10 UTC.

According to NASA’s press release, Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin will wait until the unmanned craft is at a distance of of about 600 feet (183 meters) before taking manual control of the spacecraft.

They will utilize a workstation located in the Zvezda Service Module to fly the Progress 62 vehicle back to the International Space Station’s Pirs Docking Compartment, right where it started.

From NASA:

“The system test will include verification of software and a new signal converter incorporated in the upgraded manual docking system for future use in both Progress and piloted Soyuz vehicles in the unlikely event the “Kurs” automated rendezvous in either craft encounters a problem.”

Progress 62, with more than 3 tons (6,000 pounds) of food, fuel and supplies for the International Space Station on-board, arrived at the International Space Station on December 23rd, 2015 and is planned to undock once again at 11:48 PM Saturday, July 2nd before being de-orbited into Earth’s atmosphere shortly after undocking.

The NASA TV broadcast of this event begins at 1:15 AM EDT / 5:15 UTC on Friday July 1st, 2016:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

Live NASA-TV stream:

Keep up with the International Space Station crews and the research they perform at:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

Story via NASA

Update @ 2:05 AM EDT / 6:05 UTC

Imagery: NASA

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