A little while ago the HTV-5 “Kounotori” spacecraft was captured by the robotic arm Canadarm2 of the International Space Station, operated by Kimiya Yui assisted by Kjell Lindgren. The Japanese space cargo ship, which blasted off last Wednesday, is carrying food, water, scientific experiments, propellant and various hardware. After its capture, it will take a little while before the HTV-5 starts getting moved to its berthing location on the Harmony module.

Tomorrow the crew of the International Space Station will open the hatch of the HTV-5 spacecraft and start unloading its contents. It’s currently the largest space cargo ship in activity after the end of ESA’s ATV missions so the success of its mission was very important after the past months’ mishaps.

Compared to the previous HTV spacecraft, there have been some improvements that were implemented with perfect timing. In fact they include a greater load capacity and the ability to add last-minute cargo. This allowed to send to the International Space Station a lot of supplies such as water and food for the crew. The cargo also includes spare parts and various hardware added to replace the cargo lost in the missions failed in recent months that urgently needed to be shipped.

The Kounotori will remain docked to the Station for about five weeks. A series of old instruments such as the Multi-mission Consolidated Equipment (MCE), the Superconducting Submillimeter-Wave Limb-Emission Sounder (SMILES) and NASA’s experimental module Space Test Program Houston 4 (STP-H4) will be loaded on the HTV- 5 space cargo ship to be destroyed in its re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.

The next Russian Progress cargo spacecraft is scheduled to be launched on October 1, 2015 but the situation with the supplies to the International Space Station will return to normal only with the reactivation of the American Dragon and Cygnus spacecraft’s missions. There’s still no news about the resumption of the Dragon’s missions while a Cygnus is scheduled to be launched by the end of 2015.

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