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Next attempt to dock Soyuz MS-14 to ISS scheduled for morning August 27

If the attempt is successful, experts plan to return the aircraft back to Earth on September 7, 2019, First Deputy General Designer of Russia’s Energia Space Rocket Corporation Vladimir Solovyev said

Soyuz MS-14 EPA-EFE/NASA TV HANDOUT

Soyuz MS-14

© EPA-EFE/NASA TV HANDOUT

MOSCOW, August 24. /TASS/. The state commission has decided to perform the next attempt to dock the Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft carrying the Fedor android robot to the International Space Station (ISS) on the morning of August 27, First Deputy General Designer of Russia’s Energia Space Rocket Corporation Vladimir Solovyev said during a conversation with Russian ISS astronauts transmitted by NASA on Saturday. Solovyev is responsible for flights of the Russian segment of the ISS.

"In the early hours of Monday, we will carry out correction works on the Soyuz carrying Fedor in the interest of performing the docking on Tuesday, August 27. It [the next attempt to dock Soyuz MS-14 to the ISS] will take place around 8-9 am Moscow time," Solovyev said.

He noted that if the attempt is successful, experts plan to return the aircraft back to Earth on September 7, 2019. "We would like to maintain the return date - the early hours of September 7," he said.

Earlier, Solovyev informed that the next docking attempt would take place on August 26.

According to NASA live broadcast, the docking of Soyuz MS-14 was cancelled when the spaceship was at a distance of only 60 meters from the ISS. Now, the spaceship is at a safe distance from the ISS. Earlier, the announcer said that the aborted docking of the Soyuz MS-14 spaceship might be caused by a problem with an amplifier of the Kurs navigation system located on the ISS.

The spacecraft with a robot on its board was set to dock the International Space Station at 08:31 Moscow time on August 24 after a two-day flight.

The Fedor robot

The robot Fedor (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research or FEDOR) has been developed by Android Technology Company and the Advanced Research Fund on a technical assignment from Russia’s Emergencies Ministry.

The android robot has received its own name of Skybot F-850 where the letter F stands for its affiliation with the Fedor family of robots.

As Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin said, the Skybot F-850’s basic goals include transmitting telemetry data, determining parameters related to the flight safety, including overloads, and carrying out experiments to test the robot’s operations useful on the external side of the space station.

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