NASA announced a new attempt to dock the Soyuz with the ISS

A new attempt to dock the Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft can be carried out on the night of Sunday to Monday after replacing the equipment on the ISS, according to a broadcast on the NASA website.

“It is necessary to replace part of the equipment in the hope that the next attempt will be able to pass on the night of Sunday to Monday,” the American space agency said.

Soyuz MS-14 was supposed to dock at the International Space Station at 08:30 Saturday, but by this time the ship was 100 meters from it. The docking was supposed to take place in automatic mode, the ship approached the ISS, circled the station and stood in front of the berth module, but then it was visible on the broadcast that the Kurs automatic docking system could not stabilize the ship and begin approaching the ISS. After that, Soyuz was taken from a station to a distance of 300 meters from a distance of 96 meters.

An informed source told Interfax that the failure of the Course led to an unsuccessful attempt to dock the Soyuz with the ISS. According to the interlocutor of the agency, at present, experts are assessing the possibility of a new attempt at docking and the time of its implementation.

Soyuz MS-14 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 06:38 Moscow time on Thursday, and the Soyuz-2.1a rocket launched it into orbit. This was the first launch of the Soyuz-2 rocket with the Soyuz MS manned spacecraft. Currently, the crews are sent to the ISS using the Soyuz-FG rocket, however, Roscosmos has one such rocket left in reserve, which will send another expedition to the ISS at the end of September.

Soyuz-FG is equipped with an outdated analog control system of Ukrainian production, on Soyuz-2.1a a similar system is already digital and made in Russia. It is this rocket that, from 2020, will launch space Russian manned ships.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *