MOSCOW, October 3 (RIA Novosti) – Engines of Europe’s ATV space freighter, currently docked with the International Space Station (ISS), were switched on Wednesday evening to raise the station’s orbit, the Russian mission control said.

Corrections to the space station’s orbit are conducted periodically to compensate for Earth’s gravity and to ensure successful dockings.

“The spacecraft’s engines remained switched on for 815 seconds, giving the station a boost of 1.95 meters per second (6.4 feet). As a result, the [space station’s] altitude increased by 3.4 kilometers, to 418.3 kilometers,” a spokesman for Russia’s mission control said.

The space station crew currently comprises Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin, Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky, NASA astronauts Karen Nyberg and Michael Hopkins and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency.