MOSCOW, November 18. /TASS/. Russia’s Progress MS-10 cargo spaceship has docked to the International Space Station (ISS) after a two-day flight, a spokesman for the missioncontrol center said on Sunday.
"The Progress MS-10 cargo spacecraft docked to the ISS in an automated mode at 22:29 Moscow time," the spokesman said, adding that the spaceship docked to the Zvezda service module.
The Soyuz-FG carrier rocket with the Progress MS-10 cargo spaceship blasted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan at 21:14 Moscow time on Friday. Several minutes after the launch the spaceship separated from the carrier rocket and continued its flight to the International Space Station (ISS). The spaceship has delivered about 2.5 tonnes of cargoes, including fuels, water and pressurized gases, to the ISS.
The Progress spacecraft was originally scheduled to be launched to the ISS on October 30 but the launch was rescheduled for November 16 following the abortive launch of October 11.
Soyuz-FG carrier rocket with a manned Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft blasted off from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome to the International Space Station (ISS) on October 11. On board the spacecraft were Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin (the commander of the Soyuz MS-10) and NASA astronaut Nick Hague.
Following a smooth liftoff, the Soyuz’s booster malfunctioned between the first and second stages of separating, whereupon the crew was forced to abort the flight and switch to ballistic descent. The manned Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft ended up landing safely in the Kazakh steppe. The crew was not hurt. This was the first emergency situation with the launch of a manned spacecraft over the past 35 years.
The incident-probing commission announced on November 1 that the emergency situation occurred after "a nozzle cover on the oxidizer tank failed to open due to the deformation of the separation contact sensor."
The sensor was damaged during the assembly of the rocket’s first stage at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
It was the first Progress MS-10 launch by a Soyuz-FG carrier vehicle since the early 2000s when it was decided to use these carrier rockets to launch manned spacecraft. Since then, Progress cargo spaceship have been launched by Soyuz-U and Soyuz-2.1a carrier rockets.
