Progress M-7 was a Soviet uncrewed cargo spacecraft which was launched in 1991 to resupply the Mir space station. The twenty-fifth of sixty four Progress spacecraft to visit Mir, it used the Progress-M 11F615A55 configuration, and had the serial number 208. It carried supplies including food, water and oxygen for the EO-8 crew aboard Mir, as well as equipment for conducting scientific research, and fuel for adjusting the station's orbit and performing manoeuvres. It also carried the second VBK-Raduga capsule, intended to return equipment and experiment results to Earth. Progress M-7 was launched at 13:05:15 GMT on 19 March 1991, atop a Soyuz-U2carrier rocket flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It took three attempts to dock with Mir; the first of which occurred at 14:28 GMT on 21 March, and resulted in Progress M-7 approaching to within of Mir, before the attempt was aborted. During a second attempt on 23 March, approach was aborted when the spacecraft was from Mir; however, it passed within before moving away to a holding position whilst the problem was investigated. The first two attempts had used the aft docking port of the Kvant-1 module; however, it was decided to use the forward port of the core module for the next one. At 10:12:00 GMT on 26 March, the Soyuz TM-11 spacecraft which had been occupying this port undocked from it, before flying around the station and docking with Kvant-1 at 10:58:59. Progress M-7 successfully docked with Mir at 12:02:28 GMT on 28 March. During the 39 days for which Progress M-7 was docked, Mir was in an orbit of around, inclined at 51.6 degrees. Progress M-7 undocked from Mir at 22:59:36 GMT on 6 May, and was deorbited at 16:24:00 the next day, to a destructive reentry over the Pacific Ocean. Its Raduga capsule, which had been deployed following the deorbit burn, came down in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic at around 17:20 GMT; however, efforts to recover it were unsuccessful.
