An attempt on Wednesday to raise the orbit of the International Space Station by 10 kilometres has failed.
The engines of a Progress M-54 cargo ship, attached to the ISS, were supposed
to boost the ISS. But a number of the engines shut down shortly after the start of the manoeuvre, an official at Russia’s mission control centre told the RIA-Novosti news agency.
“At roughly the 117th second of the operation, several engines shut down by themselves,” the official said. “The orbit correction attempt was suspended and experts are now examining the reasons.” Officials want to establish what went wrong before attempting the operation again.
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The ISS is currently home to a Russian cosmonaut, Valery Tokarev, and US
astronaut William McArthur.
The orbit boost was to prepare the ISS for docking with another cargo vehicle, Progress M-55, due to launch on 21 December 2005. Officials say plenty of time remains to complete the orbit correction and that the current ISS orbit is not a cause for concern.
Also on Wednesday, an official from Russia’s Roscosmos space agency announced that scientists had lost control of Russia’s new Earth-monitoring satellite. The satellite, called Monitor-E, was intended map and monitor pollution, amongst other research.
Mission controllers had done “everything possible to bring the apparatus back under control, but so far have not succeeded”, said Vyacheslav Davidenko, from Roscosmos.
