Q&A with Kurt Eberly, Orbital ATK’s Antares deputy program manager

A Russian Soyuz booster and an automated Progress resupply ship reached their launch pad Friday at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, two days before firing into orbit test out a new expedited rendezvous sequence that will culminate in the Progress spacecraft’s docking with the International Space Station just three-and-a-half hours after launch.

NASA flight engineer Anne McClain grappled Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus supply ship with the International Space Station’s robotic arm Friday, marking the automated cargo freighter’s arrival after an abbreviated day-and-a-half-long journey from a launch pad in Virginia with nearly 7,600 pounds of experiments, food and provisions.

Japan’s sixth HTV supply ship departed the International Space Station on Friday and headed for a destructive re-entry over the South Pacific with trash and disused batteries from the research lab, but engineers will first use the spacecraft for a pioneering experiment to investigate a new way to remove space junk from orbit.