Russian cargo ship fails to dock at the International Space Station

THE Russian cargo ship Progress has failed to successfully dock with the International Space Station (ISS).

The failure came during tests designed to facilitate future link-ups, the US and Russian space agencies said Tuesday.

"The re-docking of the Russian ISS Progress 47 resupply spacecraft to the International Space Station has been postponed due to an apparent failure in the new Kurs-NA rendezvous system," NASA said in a statement on its website.

A spokesman for the Russian Mission Control Centre confirmed that the cargo ship, known as Progress M-15M, had failed to dock, without providing further details.

The docking was to have taken place at 0158 GMT, the Russian Mission Control Centre said.

The vehicle had undocked from the station on Sunday to perform tests to faciliate future dockings of cargo ships to the space station.

The Russian Space Agency said later that the cargo ship was currently located 484 kilometres from the ISS and the next docking attempt would take place after the scheduled arrival of the Japanese HTV-3 cargo ship on Friday.


Russia's space program has been beset by a litany of technical problems which have resulted in the loss of a half dozen satellites and vehicles over the past year, including a Progress cargo vessel bound for the ISS.

There are currently six people on the space station, which orbits 350 kilometres above the Earth and is permanently occupied by an international crew.

American Sunita Williams, Japan's Akihiko Hoshide and Yury Malenchenko of Russia joined Russians Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin and US astronaut Joseph Acaba at the orbiter earlier this month.