Phone home: Russian cargo spacecraft hit by communication glitch

An unmanned Progress spacecraft carrying supplies to the International Space Station has suffered a glitch after a successful launch earlier today, Russian officials say, delaying and potentially imperiling its arrival at the orbiting lab. A Soyuz rocket carrying the Progress M-27M supply craft launched successfully from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, but the M-27M is now failing to send and receive data. As a result, the controllers have opted to extend the vessel’s journey to two days instead of six hours.

The ship reached orbit but the full volume of telemetry is not being received.

Spokesman for mission control

Initial telemetry readings suggested the Progress 59’s two Kurs “automated rendezvous antennas” failed to deploy, but later telemetry seemed to indicate the antennas are behaving normally and other antennas did not deploy, NASA launch commentators said. The Progress is one of four different vessels that ferry cargo to the space station. The other three are Japan’s H-II Transfer Vehicle and the Dragon and Cygnus spacecraft, which are built by American aerospace firms SpaceX and Orbital ATK, respectively.

Science