After being failed to dock a Russian capsule carrying a humanoid robot at the International Space Station on Saturday, a second attempt has been successful on Monday night. The news has been confirmed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
It was a Russian Soyuz spacecraft that was carrying a Russian humanoid robot to the International Space Station (ISS).
NASA confirmed the news on twitter, the tweet reads, “Docking confirmed! While flying about 250 miles above Eastern Mongolia, an uncrewed Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft successfully arrived and docked to the @Space_Station at 11:08 pm ET.
Get more details: https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/”
Earlier on Saturday, the mission was failed and the US space agency NASA confirmed that news in a statement, “Russian cosmonauts issued a command to abort the automated approach of an uncrewed Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station,”
“The craft was unable to lock onto its target at the station,” and “backed a safe distance away from the orbital complex while the Russian flight controllers assess the next steps,” NASA said.
This time, it was the second attempt of the spacecraft–Soyuz MS-14. The spacecraft is carrying the humanoid robot Skybot F-850, which is named as Fedor. It is basically a life-sized, artificially intelligent robot as well as the first humanoid robot to send to space by Russia.
“While flying about 250 miles above Eastern Mongolia, an uncrewed Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft successfully arrived and docked to the @Space_Station at 11:08 pm ET,” said Nasa in a statement.
Russia hopes that the further future models of FEDOR, an acronym for the Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research, is going to be developed to carry out extravehicular undertakings.
There was also a General Motors-designed humanoid named Robonaut 2 which also made it to space in the year 2011 with the same kind of objective of working in high-risk environments. It was then returned to Earth in 2018 after some technical issues arise.
Initially, the spacecraft attempted to dock on ISS on Saturday but cosmonauts halted the plan “because of a problem on the station’s side of the so-called KURS automated rendezvous system that prevented its automated docking“.
“The Soyuz is on a safe trajectory above and behind the space station that will bring it in the vicinity of the orbital complex again in 24 hours and 48 hours,” NASA said previously.
“Russian flight controllers have indicated the next earliest docking attempt could be Monday morning.”
Also, at that time TASS news agency quoted the head of the Russian side of ISS, Vladimir Soloviov saying “telemetry analysis showed there were failings with radio equipment” on the station.
On Wednesday, August 21, Soyuz MS 14 was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
