TORONTO – A Russian cargo ship destined for the International Space Station, with more than 6,000 pounds of food, fuel and supplies on board, was unable to communicate with ground controllers on Tuesday.
The Progress M-27M was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and was scheduled to dock six hours later.
However, Russian state news agencies, citing sources in the space industry, said two antennas of the docking system had failed to unfold. They also reported that the Progress fell short of its designated orbit due to a problem in the operation of one of the rocket’s stages.
The unmanned cargo ship is in orbit, but is unable to process telemetry data to ground controllers. The docking that was to take place has been temporarily suspended.
Initially the Russian space agency Roscosmos said Mission Control was having trouble getting data from the spacecraft and decided to postpone the docking at least until Thursday. However, when it was unable to communicate with the ship, it postponed the Thursday docking as well.
According to NASA, Russian flight controllers attempted to recover command capability during a ground pass at 9:20 a.m., but were unsuccessful.
The next series of ground station passes is expected to resume late Tuesday evening.
–with files from The Associated Press
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