Article Posted on : - Sep 24, 2010

Undocking of Soyuz TMA-18 postponed until Saturday

MOSCOW (BNS): Russian Federal Space Agency has postponed the landing of Russian Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft by one day due to some technical glitches in the spacecraft, a media report said.

The departure of the spaceship from the International Space Station (ISS), which was earlier scheduled for Friday, is postponed until Saturday.

"Russian cosmonauts Aleksander Skvortsov and Mikhail Korniyenko and NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, who were travelling on board the space ship, have already been returned to the ISS,” RIA Novosti quoted Chief of the Russian Space Agency Roskosmos Anatoly Perminov as saying.

According to the report, the spaceship was scheduled to undock at 01.39 am GMT and land at 04:55 am GMT to the south-east of the central Kazakh city of Jezkazgan.

The new spacecraft of Soyuz TMA-10M with digital command and control systems is scheduled to launch from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on October 8.