International Space Station gets fresh supplies

A Russian cargo ship has finally docked with the International Space Station in the Space and has brought supplies and food for the astronauts residing on the space station. The docking took place on Saturday and just a couple of days are left when a new crew would arrive at the Space Station. The supplies were taken to the ISS by an unmanned Progress M-54 ship, which lifted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan two days ago.

It hooked up with the orbiting station at around 14:49 GMT as per the reports from the Russian space agency. The docking took place automatically unlike the previous time when Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev had to manually steer to dock it with the International Space Station.

The ship is carrying nearly 2.5 metric tons of fuel, food, and water, along with a replacement cartridge for the station’s oxygen generator. This is the last month for the current crew to station at the International Space Station and a two-man replacement crew is scheduled to head to the station on October 1, along with a US scientist who is paying the Russian space agency $20m for a weeklong visit.

Due to the problems NASA is facing with their Space Shuttle fleet, their has been a lot of problems for the two countries to maintain a steady supplies of food and other resources to the ISS. Space Shuttle is now delayed to at least the later part of next year.