ISS orbit correction failed - mission control
30/11/2006 09:34
MOSCOW, November 30 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Mission Control Center said Thursday it had failed to correct the International Space Station's orbit due to an engine malfunction.
The orbit correction was planned as part of preparations for the docking of a U.S. space shuttle scheduled to lift off on December 7 and a Russian Progress M-59 cargo vehicle, whose launch has been set for January 2007.
"The orbit correction has been aborted after the engines of the Progress M-55 cargo vehicle worked for 78 seconds instead of 1,102 seconds and failed to achieve the profile thrust mode," a mission control official said.
He said the mission control originally planned to raise the ISS orbit by 7.3 kilometers (4.5 miles), but it was not clear how much the orbit changed after the abortive correction attempt.
The official also said the causes of the malfunction would be established sometime in the afternoon after all data was processed.
"We will establish the causes of the correction failure later today," he said.
A similar incident occurred during ISS correction maneuvers in October 2005, when they were aborted after a system engine shutoff of the Progress M-55 cargo vehicle hampered the mission control's attempt to raise the station's orbit by 10 km (about 6 miles) to maintain working orbital parameters.
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