Russian capsule docks at space station
KOROLYOV, Russia -- A Russian cosmonaut was forced to dock a Soyuz capsule carrying U.S. billionaire tourist Charles Simonyi manually at the international space station Saturday after a sensor monitoring the engines apparently malfunctioned.
Engineers played down the incident, but it renewed recent questions about Russia's otherwise famously reliable spacecraft.
Vladimir Solovyov, flight director for the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said that just a few minutes before the docking time an autopilot signal went off showing that one of Soyuz engines might have failed.
Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka reported that the engines were operating normally and he took manual control of the capsule to keep an emergency computer program from thrusting the engines and sending the craft backing away from the station.
"We took the decision not to allow that," Solovyov told a news conference at Russia's mission control in Korolyov, on Moscow's outskirts.
"We have to figure out what happened," he said.
The docking by Padalka appeared otherwise smooth and was slightly ahead of schedule, roughly two days after the capsule blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan's barren steppe. Applause broke out among space officials and crew relatives gathered at mission control after the hookup was announced.
Cosmonauts typically receive extensive training in the event that Soyuz's autopilot fails or some other problem pops up.
"Everyone worked wonderfully, on the ground and on the space craft. There were no uncontrolled situations," said Vitaly Lopota, chief engineer with Soyuz manufacturer RKK Energia.
Padalka and U.S. astronaut Michael Barratt are joining the station's current crew, while Simonyi, who is making his second trip as a paying customer to the space station, returns to Earth on April 7 along with cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov and NASA astronaut Michael Fincke.
Some three hours after docking, the crews opened the hatches and Padalka, Barratt and Simonyi floated in to greet the station's occupants — Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, NASA astronaut Michael Fincke and cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov — with hugs, smiles and handshakes.
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