Yesterday, the Russian Prichal module, also known as Uzlovoy Module (UM), docked with the International Space Station’s Nauka/MLM module becoming part of the Russian section. Prichal was launched on November 24 and flown to the Station by a modified Progress cargo spacecraft. Once the task to make it fully operational is completed, it will provide five more docking hatches.
After the various problems that occurred in the journey of the Nauka/MLM module, culminating in the accidental thrusters burn after docking, the Prichal module’s journey and arrival went very smoothly. The cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station will soon be able to start unloading the 700 kg (a little more than 1,500 lbs) of various cargoes that have been transported within Prichal.
The integration works of the Prichal module will add to those already started for the Nauka/MLM module. The cosmonauts on the International Space Station are scheduled to conduct various spacewalks over the next few months to complete all the necessary work. According to the Russian space agency Roscosmos’ plans, the first Soyuz spacecraft will use Prichal for docking in March 2022, and then it will become the normal docking module for subsequent Soyuz spacecraft.
The cargo spacecraft called Progress M-UM is a modified Progress M spacecraft with the Prichal module instead of the normal cargo compartment. It’s scheduled to remain docked with the International Space Station for about a month. Roscosmos has scheduled December 21 as the date for the Progress M-UM’s propulsion module to undock from Prichal but in these cases, there can always be variations. After leaving the Station, the propulsion module will disintegrate re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
Roscosmos administrator Dmitry Rogozin expressed his understandable satisfaction with the success of the Prichal module’s journey. Rogozin also mentioned that Prichal’s design is useful in developing technologies that could be used in a Russian space station. That’s a project that the Russians have been talking about for years along with other possible space missions. The Nauka/MLM and Prichal modules are in space with more than a decade behind their original schedule, so we’ll probably have to wait years to see if the Russians can carry out new space missions despite the problems with their space program.
