Mission type Mir resupply Spacecraft type Progress-M 11F615A55 | COSPAR ID 1991-057A Manufacturer NPO Energia | |
Launch mass 7,250 kilograms (15,980 lb) Launch date 20 August 1991, 22:54:10 (1991-08-20UTC22:54:10Z) UTC | ||
Progress M-9 was a Soviet unmanned cargo spacecraft which was launched in 1991 to resupply the Mir space station. The twenty-seventh of sixty four Progress spacecraft to visit Mir, it used the Progress-M 11F615A55 configuration, and had the serial number 210. It carried supplies including food, water and oxygen for the EO-9 crew aboard Mir, as well as equipment for conducting scientific research, and fuel for adjusting the station's orbit and performing manoeuvres. It was the third Progress spacecraft to carry a VBK-Raduga capsule, which was used to return equipment and experiment results to Earth.
Progress M-9 was launched at 22:54:10 GMT on 20 August 1991, atop a Soyuz-U2 carrier rocket flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Following two days of free flight, it docked with the forward port of Mir's core module at 00:54:17 GMT on 23 August.
During the thirty eight days for which Progress M-9 was docked, Mir was in an orbit of approximately 379 by 396 kilometres (205 by 214 nmi), inclined at 51.6 degrees. Progress M-9 undocked from Mir at 01:53:00 GMT on 30 September, and was deorbited few hours later at 07:45, to a destructive reentry over the Pacific Ocean. The Raduga capsule landed in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic at 08:16:24 GMT.