On Monday (Feb. 14), Russia's Progress 80 cargo ship sailed toward the orbiting lab, carrying around 3 tons of supplies and equipment.

At 11:25 p.m., a Russian Soyuz rocket launched Progress 80 from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome. Monday, EST (0425 GMT or 9:25 a.m. local time on Tuesday, Feb. 15).

Before reaching the International Space Station, the freighter will orbit the Earth more than 30 times, a milestone that is expected to occur early Thursday morning (Feb. 17). Beginning at 1:30 a.m., NASA TV will broadcast live coverage of the cargo ship's arrival. The Progress should connect with the Russian Poisk docking module at 2:06 a.m. EST (0630 GMT) on Thursday. In the United States, the time zone is called the (0806 GMT).

Progress 80 will deliver around three tons of food, fuel, and supplies to the International Space Station, according to NASA, and Roscosmos, Russia's federal space agency, will select the cargo craft's departure date from the orbiting lab at a later date.

Progress deliveries will be reduced to a single-orbit, two-hour trek to the orbiting lab, according to Roscosmos. If early testing is successful, the superfast route will be implemented in 2023.

Many Progress vehicles were able to reach the station in just two orbits, or three hours, starting in 2018. However, various circumstances, including as the operations of other spacecraft attached to the space station, influence the time of launches and arrivals at the space station.