With snow flurries falling from a chilled, leaden grey sky, the Progress M-13M (45P) cargo craft and its Soyuz-U booster rolled out to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 8 p.m. CDT on Thursday, Oct. 27 (7 a.m. Friday, Oct. 28 Baikonur time) for liftoff Sunday, Oct. 30 at 5:11 a.m. CDT to the International Space Station.
The unmanned cargo vehicle is stocked with 2.9 tons of food, fuel and supplies for the space station's crew, including 1,653 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen, 926 pounds of water, and 3,108 pounds of maintenance gear, spare parts and experiment hardware.
The ship's cargo also includes
two Apple iPads, the first two tablet computers launched into space, for entertainment use by the station's crew.
M-13M's launch will mark the return to flight for the supply ship and its Soyuz-U booster, after the previous vehicle was lost during a
launch failure in August.