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A second attempt to re-dock the Russian Progress M-15M resupply spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) with the help of a new rendezvous system has been a success, a spokesman for the Russian Mission Control Center said on Sunday.
“The re-docking took place in a normal mode at the estimated time,” a Mission Control spokesman told RIA Novosti.
The unmanned space freighter, which had arrived at the ISS in April, undocked from the station early on Monday in order to perform a series of engineering tests during re-docking designed to verify the Kurs-NA automated rendezvous system.
The vehicle initially separated to a distance of about 100 miles from the station and held position for 24 hours before Tuesday’s failed attempt to re-dock with the space station due to an apparent failure in the Kurs-NA sensors.
The failure triggered a passive abort - a standard procedure that took the Progress spacecraft to a safe distance of about 1.8 miles below the space station.
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