November 30, 2013

An unmanned Russian resupply spacecraft carrying an improved navigation system docked early Saturday with the International Space Station, Russian Mission Control said.

The docking had to be carried out manually because of unspecified malfunctions in the navigation system, said Vladimir Solovyov, flight director of the Russian segment of the ISS.

A special commission was expected to report by Tuesday on the cause of the malfunctions, Solovyov said.

The Progress M-21M space freighter was loaded with almost 2.5 metric tons of food, fuel, experiment hardware and other supplies for the space station’s six Expedition 38 crew members. The craft lifted off aboard a Soyuz-U launch vehicle from Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan on Tuesday.

On November 28, the spacecraft conducted flybys of the orbital station and successfully tested a lighter and more efficient automated navigation and docking system, known as Kurs-NA.

The Kurs-NA boasts advanced electronics, a fully-digitized control system and increased docking precision compared to its predecessor, Kurs. The improved system will be used on all upgraded Soyuz and Progress vehicles in the future.
The space station’s crew currently comprises Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Tyurin, Sergey Ryazanskiy and Oleg Kotov, NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins, and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata.

Image credit – Roscosmos

More from this category:
June 17, 2014

ISS crew replaced food heating block that caused smoke pollution onboard the ISS on June 10, RSC Energia representative reported. On Tuesday last week cosmonaut…

full story
August 29, 2018

On August 27 the Hero of the Russian Federation, Hero of the Soviet Union, USSR pilot-cosmonaut, executive director for manned space programs of the State…

full story
September 23, 2013

Soyuz-FG booster was installed on the launch pad #1 (Gagarin launchpad). On September 26,2013 the booster will orbit SoyuzTMA-10M spacecraft with 37/38 ISS mission crew…

full story
February 25, 2015

Preparation works for the launch of Proton-M booster with Briz-M upper stage and Russian Express-AM7 satellite started at Baikonur spaceport Khrunichev centre press office reports….

full story
March 22, 2020

The “Soyuz-2.1b” launch vehicle with the “Fregat” upper stage and 34 satellites of the OneWeb communications system was successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on…

full story
September 13, 2021

On September 9, 2021, the 65th long-term ISS expedition flight engineers Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov egressed the station for the 50th planned…

full story
February 16, 2014

Proton-M heavy booster with Turkish TurkSat-4A communication satellite was launched from Baikonur Spaceport, Roscosmos representative reported. Space device separated from Briz-M upper stage at 10.22…

full story
July 24, 2019

On the night of July 22, 2019 from the Khrunichev Space Center (part of Roscosmos State Corporation) the parts of the “Proton-M” launch vehicle (the…

full story