Article Posted on : - May 03, 2010

Progress cargo spacecraft

MOSCOW (BNS): Space freighter Progress M-05M docked with the International Space Station (ISS) manually on Saturday, a media report said.

Russian news agency RIA Novosti said, the resupply ship Progress M-05M was launched on Soyuz-U rocket from the Baikonour space center in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, to deliver more than 2.5 tonnes of supplies.

The unmanned vehicle is designed to automatically dock with the Station. However, due to a problem with the vehicle, Russian astronaut Oleg Kotov took control and manually docked the Progress with Pirs docking compartment.

“Progress M-05M was docked to the Pirs port on May 1, at 1030 pm in manual mode, due to an unknown failure in the automatic sequence. Experts suspect that there had been a fault in the Progress' propulsion system," Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, said in a statement.

The Russian spaceship has delivered more than 2600 kg of cargo to the station, including propellant, oxygen, food, scientific equipment, and additional hardware for ISS RS and USOS, crew parcels.

Progress M-05M is the 37th Russian logistics spacecraft launched to the International Space Station.