News

May 1, 2010. S.P.Korolev RSC Energia - MCC-M,
Korolev, Moscow region

Russian cargo transport vehicle (CTV) Progress M-05M after the autonomous flight according to a three-day rendezvous scheme docked to the International Space Station (ISS).

The vehicle rendezvous with the Station and berthing were performed in the automatic mode. Because of the automatic rendezvous mode failures at a distance of about 1000 m between the docking objects the Lead Operational Control Team and Technical Management accepted a decision to change over to the manual control mode of the docking. The ISS commander Oleg Kotov completed berthing and successfully docked the vehicle to the ISS.

A contact of the Pirs Module docking port of the ISS Russian Segment (RS) occurred at 22:30:21 Moscow time.

The ISS Expedition - 23 crew operating onboard the Station monitored the rendezvous and docking processes. All dynamic operations were performed by the mission control specialists under control of the Technical Management (Technical Director, V.A. Lopota - S.P. Korolev RSC Energia President, General Designer).

At the Mission Control Center near Moscow (MCC-M) during the final operations for the vehicle rendezvous and docking to the ISS the following persons were present: representatives of the State Commission (Chairman - A.N. Perminov Roscosmos Director), Roscosmos, NASA, ESA, allied enterprises and organizations of the branch, Corporation managers and specialists.

By telemetry information data and reports of the ISS crew the Station and vehicle onboard systems operated in the design modes.

For information:

The vehicle delivered about 2.6 tons of cargo to the Space Station including reserves of fuel, water, food (fresh products included), oxygen; medical support equipment; atmospheric revitalization system, sanitary-hygienic and water supply systems equipment; onboard documentation (kits of flight data files), crew parcels, equipment for the ISS Functional Cargo Block Zarya; kit of the U.S. crew items for the Russian cosmonauts, science equipment. 420 kg of cargo were designed for the US Segment.

The mission control and the system status monitoring of the vehicle and the ISS in the rendezvous and docking phase were provided by Lead Operational Control Team (LOCT)formed of specialists of RSC Energia, MCC-M and enterprises of the branch. The Flight director is V.A. Soloviev. First Deputy General Designer of RSC Energia.

The ISS RS consists of Functional Cargo Block Zarya, Service Module Zvezda, Docking Module/Compartment Pirs, Mini-Research Module Poisk, manned spacecraft Soyuz TMA-17 and Soyuz TMA-18, cargo vehicles Progress M-04M and Progress M-05M.

The ISS crew consists of the following Russian cosmonauts: Oleg Kotov (ISS commander), Aleksandr Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko and U.S. astronauts Timothy Creamer and Tracy Caldwell Dyson, JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi.

The ISS is flying in a near-earth orbit with the following parameters: minimum altitude of 348.6 km, maximum altitude of 361,4 km, orbital period of 91.4 min.

A special commission at the Mission Control Center analyzes the causes of what has happened.