A Roscosmos Soyuz-2 rocket launched the Progress MS-15 (76P) mission on July 23 at 2:26 PM (UTC) from LC-31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

MS-15 is a resupply mission to provide the International Space Station (ISS) crew with supplies and consumables. Among the cargo is a new piece of equipment that will help trace the source of elevated benzene levels in the space station’s air. A NASA spokesperson said that there is already additional air filtering in place, and so far, all detected levels have remained well below the threshold where it would impact the crew.

Other items of note include some new shoes for one of the NASA crew members, solid and liquid waste containers for the toilets, a pretreat tank for the water recycling system in the Russian segment of the station, along with two months’ worth of food.

Docking with the ISS was done using the KURS-NA automated docking system. It was a bit more exciting than usual as a software issue caused Progress to deviate from the flight plan and go off-course. Russian controllers and crew did not hit the abort button, and the docking took place once things were resolved.

More Information

Roscosmos launch news release 

Progress MS-15 arrives at Station with eventful automated docking (NASASpaceflight.com)