NASA's Progress 96 cargo mission to the International Space Station did not launch as planned Wednesday, Sept. 9. The agency has not announced a new date.
The unpiloted spacecraft was scheduled to lift off at 11:15 a.m. CDT aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying about three tons of food, fuel and supplies for the seven-member Expedition 75 crew. Space-tracking service KeepTrack listed the mission's status as "To Be Determined" on Wednesday, with a tentative slip to Sept. 16.
NASA's press release had outlined a two-day flight ending with an autonomous docking at the station's Poisk module at 1:37 p.m. CDT on Friday, Sept. 11. That timeline is no longer current.
Flight controllers at Johnson Space Center in Houston, the lead center for ISS operations, monitor every cargo arrival from Mission Control. The delay comes after the station's previous cargo vehicle, Progress 94, undocked Monday, Sept. 7, and departed for a planned destructive re-entry over the Pacific Ocean.
Seven crew members are aboard the station.
Commander Jessica Meir and NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway and Anil Menon are joined by ESA flight engineer Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov, Andrey Fedyaev and Anna Kikina. Hathaway, Meir, Adenot and Fedyaev arrived in mid-February on SpaceX Crew-12. Dubrov, Kikina and Menon reached the station July 14 aboard the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft.
NASA said the spacecraft, once it does dock, will remain attached for about five months before departing for a planned burn-up over the Pacific.
No reason for the postponement has been made public. NASA had not issued an updated launch date as of Thursday, Sept. 10.







