An unmanned Soyuz MS-14, carrying supplies and Fedor, a humanoid robot, is taking another shot at docking at the International Space Station (ISS) after the first attempt went awry due to a technical glitch.
The docking initially scheduled for Saturday was aborted after a rendezvous system, known as Kurs, malfunctioned. Typically, the crew can take control and dock manually, but Fedor was unable to steer the spaceship on his own.
READ MORE: ‘He feels good’: Humanoid robot Fedor safe despite ISS docking abort in space
The ISS crew had two days to fix the flaw. They did it by relocating the Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft that was already at the station to another dock, thus freeing a fully functioning dock for Fedor’s second try on Monday night.
The #SoyuzMS13 spacecraft was successfully redocked from the Zvezda module to the Poisk module of the Russian segment of the ISS.
The freed up Zvezda module berth will be used to dock the Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft, which is scheduled for August, 27 at 03:12 UTC pic.twitter.com/8iGFmgCwBz
— РОСКОСМОС (@roscosmos) August 26, 2019
Fedor is set to take part in “about five or six scientific tasks” that for now are shrouded in secrecy. He is supposed to stay at the ISS until September 6.
Fedor, formally known as Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research, is about 190 centimeters (6.2 feet) tall and weighs some 160 kilograms (350 pounds).
WATCH LIVE:
Subscribe to RT newsletter to get stories the mainstream media won’t tell you.
Comments are closed.