MOSCOW, October 16. /TASS/. The Progress MS-07 cargo spacecraft has docked with the International Space Station (ISS) in automatic mode, Russia’s Flight Control Center reported on Monday.
"The cargo spacecraft [the Progress MS-07] has docked with the ISS. The maneuver was performed at the designated time [14:09 Moscow time] in automatic mode," the Flight Control Center said.
The resupply ship has docked with the Pirs module of the station’s Russian segment. The docking process was controlled by ISS cosmonauts Sergei Ryazansky and Alexander Misurkin.
A Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket with the Progress MS-07 cargo spacecraft blasted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan at 11:46 Moscow time on October 14.
The resupply ship has delivered 2.5 tonnes of various cargoes to the ISS, including fuel, water, compressed gases, equipment for scientific experiments, parcels for the crew and fresh foodstuffs.
Launch rescheduled
The Progress MS-07 cargo spacecraft was expected to blast off on October 12 to perform its flight to the International Space Station under a three-hour scheme (two revolutions around the Earth) for the first time.
However, a decision was made to reschedule the launch for October 14 and perform the flight under a two-day scheme. As Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos said, the flight under a different scheme had become impossible due to a change in ballistic conditions.
Specialists are looking into the cause of the launch’s postponement.
A source in the Russian rocket and space industry earlier told TASS that a failure in the spacecraft’s telemetry system could have been the cause for rescheduling the flight.
As of today, the quickest practiced scheme of the flight to the orbital station by Progress and Soyuz spacecraft is a six-hour scheme (four revolutions around the Earth). The four-rotation scheme was used for the first time by a Progress M-16M cargo spacecraft, which blasted off in August 2012.