Delay in docking of Soyuz craft with International Space Station

A veteran Russian space station commander, a rookie cosmonaut and a NASA shuttle flier rocketed smoothly into space aboard a Russian Soyuz ferry craft Tuesday, but the crew ran into problems executing a required rendezvous rocket firing, delaying docking with the International Space Station until Thursday at the earliest.

NASA astronaut Steven Swanson and two Russian cosmonauts on their way to the International Space Station, March 25, 2014.

NASA

Skvortsov and his crewmates had hoped to be the fifth crew to carry out a four-orbit rendezvous. They executed the first two rendezvous firings on schedule, but the third firing was not carried out, apparently because the spacecraft was not in the expected attitude, or orientation.

With the rendezvous sequence interrupted, Russian flight controllers defaulted to the more traditional two-day sequence while engineers reviewed telemetry and stood by for additional passes over Russian ground stations to collect more data.

"Right now, we don't understand exactly what happened," a Russian flight controller radioed the crew. "So we'll analyze and review all the telemetry. On the next orbit, there will be a comm pass. ... During this comm pass, we'll download the whole mass of telemetry and we will analyze it and review it and we'll try to figure out what happened."

The two-day rendezvous profile will be familiar to Skvortsov, who followed the same set of procedures during his first flight to the space station in 2010.

Assuming the problem can be resolved in time, Skvortsov will oversee an automated docking at the station's upper Poisk module around 7:58 p.m. EDT Thursday. Josh Byerly, NASA's mission control commentator, said the crew was in no danger, and that more than enough supplies were on board to support a two-day 34-orbit rendezvous.

Whenever they arrive, Skvortsov and his crewmates will be welcomed aboard the space station by Expedition 39 commander Koichi Wakata, cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio.

Wakata and his two crewmates have had the station to themselves since March 11 when Soyuz TMA-10M commander Oleg Kotov, Sergey Ryazanskiy and Mike Hopkins returned to Earth. Wakata and his crewmates are scheduled to follow suit in their Soyuz TMA-11M ferry craft on May 13.

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Delay in docking of Soyuz craft with International Space Station