The NASA video shows the thin docking of the Progress 80 spacecraft

The Russian cargo spacecraft Progress 80 docked safely at the International Space Station (ISS) at 2:03 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, February 17th.

NASA has released a video showing the final stages of the docking procedure, which successfully passed 270 miles over the South Pacific. The footage shows docking from different angles and includes live audio from Mission Control in the US

The Russian spacecraft “Progress 80” without a crew automatically docked to the docking station “Poisk” at 2:03 am ET, delivering almost three tons of food, fuel and materials to the laboratory in orbit. https://t.co/xGcjkSH4Bx pic.twitter.com/K6mJSRNb3A

– International Space Station (@Space_Station) February 17, 2022

Delivering about three tons of food, fuel and materials for the crew of the expedition 66 of the seven people aboard the ISS, the video begins with a spaceship without a crew 72 meters from the dock.

While the Progress 80 seems to be moving slowly, it is actually spinning in orbit at a speed of about 17,000 miles per hour. It looks like it is gently drifting towards the ISS because it matches the speed of the station to dock.

Because Progress and ISS rotate at high speeds, the docking process is delicate. As you can see in the video, it takes about 10 minutes for Progress to get out of its position 70 meters from the station to the point where it can finally attach to the docking station of the Poisk station, which is part of the Russian ISS segment.

The Progress spacecraft was a reliable workhorse for the Russian space agency. Since the 1970s, 168 flights of various iterations of Progress have been made, and only three failures occurred between 2011 and 2016.

Unlike the SpaceX Cargo Dragon spacecraft, which traveled back and forth space station on deliveries since 2012, Progress is not intended for reuse and after the departure of the ISS burns down when entering the Earth’s atmosphere at high speed.

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