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Russian mission control center trying to stop spin of cargo spacecraft Progress

Xinhua, April 29, 2015 Adjust font size:

Russia's mission control center is trying to stop the spin of the cargo spacecraft Progress M-27M, local media reported Tuesday.

The spacecraft was launched by a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan at around 10:09 a.m. Moscow time (0709 GMT) and was planned to dock to the International Space Station ( ISS) at 16:07 p.m. Moscow time (1307 GMT).

It is still doubtful that the docking mission could be a success as the cargo ship is currently in an uncontrollable wild rotational spin.

The Interfax news agency reported that the mission control center has issued a stabilization command to the spacecraft, but it is not yet clear whether it is effective or not.

"It is not ruled out that specialists would use the remote control mode to stop the spacecraft's rotation. The chances of success are few, because the direction of rotation remains unclear, " Tass news agency quoted a source in space industry as saying.

Despite the wild spin, the Progress is also having communication problems from the time it entered orbit. Two of five antennas failed to deploy on the spaceship, which makes the ground controllers unable to acquire telemetry of the Progress and thus impossible to manipulate the following stages of the docking mission.

Currently the mission has been changed to a two-day flight mode and communication with the Progress is still lost.

Next attempt to establish communication would be at 03:50 a.m. Moscow time (0050 GMT) on Wednesday when the spaceship re-enters communication range.

It is possible for cosmonauts on the ISS to carry out a manual docking, as all Russian cosmonauts had held multiple drills to implement manual docking, RIA Novosti news agency quoted another source as saying.

The resupply vehicle was carrying about 2.5 tonnes of cargo, including fuel, oxygen, food and scientific equipment.

The Progress also carried with it a replica of the Victory Banner to celebrate the upcoming Russian Victory Day on May 9, which commemorates the victory in 1945 over Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War, Russia's term for the World War II. Endite