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A Russian Progress vessel carrying more than two tonnes of supplies for a two-man crew on the International Space Stationdocked with the station early on Sunday, bringing music and mail, mission control said. The craft docked with the ISS at 0345 GMT, Interfax news agency quoted mission control officials as saying. The vessel blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, carrying a cargo of 2,566 kilogrammes including food, water and fuel. The shipment included fresh fruit and vegetables, financial magazines and parcels from friends and relatives of Russian cosmonaut Yury Malchenko and his US fellow-astronaut Edward Lu, who have been working in orbit for the past four months. Mission chief Vladimir Solovyov said the docking operation had been carried out automatically but under the supervision of the ISS crew. "The first thing that interests the crew -- as I know from personal experience -- is parcels and letters from families and relatives. But they'll have to spend some time before reaching them, as they are at the bottom of the container," he said. For the first time, the service module brought satellite telephones to the ISS, mission control said. The decision to provide satellite communication facilities was taken after the previous ISS crew, Russia's Nikolai Budarin and US astronauts Kenneth Bowersox, landed on earth last May almost 500 kilometres (300 miles) from the assigned area and were unable to contact the search and rescue services by radio. It took rescuers two hours to find them. Space psychologists also shipped comedy films and music CDs by Russian and US performers. Flight commander Malenchenko and flight engineer Lu were sent to the ISS in april for a six-month mission. Russia has been the only country servicing the 16-nation orbiting space station since the United States grounded its shuttle programme following the breakup in February of its Columbia spacecraft as it returned to earth from the ISS. On Thursday another service module left the ISS carrying carrying its accumulated waste from the past seven months. The waste, which included a variety of discarded clothing, napkins, tins and pieces of equipment weighing a total of one tonne, mostly burned up in space with the craft itself on entering the denser layers of the atmosphere. The remainder splashed down into the Pacific Ocean. Following the suspension of US shuttle flights in the wake of the February 1 Columbia disaster in which seven US astronauts died, Russia has borne full responsibility -- by arrangement with the US space agency NASA -- for launches of supply vessels and maintenance of the platform's life support system. The next supply ship is due to be launched to the ISS at the end of the year, Solovyov said. All rights reserved. � 2004 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse. Quick Links   Nov 02, 2006 |
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