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Supply ship successfully docks with Mir
October 8, 1997
Web posted at: 6:05 p.m. EDT (2205 GMT)KOROLYOV, Russia (CNN) -- After a day's delay caused by a crew miscue, an unmanned cargo ship successfully docked with the Russian space station Mir Wednesday.
The Progress M-36 spacecraft brought a back-up computer, scientific equipment, fuel and drinking water to the space station. Also on board is a European-built device that will fly around the outside of the 11-year-old Mir to examine its surface.
That device, built as part an ongoing effort to design and construct an international space station, may be used to help find holes punctured in one of Mir's modules during a collision with another cargo ship in June.
The docking of Mir and Progress was supposed to take place Tuesday. But it had to be postponed when an old garbage-laden cargo ship, attached to Mir at the same port where the new Progress spacecraft was supposed to dock, didn't detach as scheduled on Monday.
The crew of the space station later discovered that they had not properly unhooked one of the 16 latches that held the old ship to its port. After it was unhooked, the undocking of the ship proceeded smoothly Tuesday.
Wednesday's successful docking marked the first time that a cargo ship was guided into Mir using a new antenna system designed to reduce the complexity of the docking procedure and save energy. Two previous attempts to dock a supply ship with this method failed, forcing the crew to bring in the ship manually.
"After each failure, we analyzed the math ... and adjusted the docking procedures," said flight control chief Vladimir Solovyov. He said Wednesday's docking was "very clean."
Space officials crowded on the balcony of Mission Control in Korolyov, outside of Moscow -- many sighing with relief when the docking went off without a hitch.
Mir has been beset with a series of technical failures and mishaps in the past few months, the most serious of which was the collision in June that punctured a hole in Spektr, one of Mir's modules. It was rendered unusable by the space wreck.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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Related stories:
- A day late, Mir casts off supply ship - October 7, 1997
- Supply ship fails to undock from Mir - October 6, 1997
- Leak in Mir may have been located - October 3, 1997
- Russians, Americans embrace in space - September 27, 1997
Related sites:
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- NASA Shuttle-Mir Web- official NASA site for U.S. astronauts and their activities aboard the Russian Mir Space Station
- NASA Office of Inspector General
- ISS Phase I - Space Station Mir - contains graphics and specifications of the diferent areas of MIR
- Russian Space Agency - homepage of the Russian Space Agency through the NASA site
- Russian Space Research Institute (IKI)
- MIR Space Station - news, research, history, images and links from Maximov Online
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