The transition to manual control was required by the commander of the SOYUZ MS-19 due to a malfunction in the KURS docking system on the International Space Station (ISS). This was announced on Tuesday, October 5, by the head of ROSCOSMOS Dmitry Rogozin.
The sOyuz-2.1a carrier rocket with the sOyuz MS-19 spacecraft was launched at 11:55 Moscow Time. After the successful separation of the ship from the third stage of the rocket, the solar panels and antennas on the ship were opened and put into orbit. The ship could not dock with the ISS in automatic mode, so the docking was carried out manually.
"According to the first information, we are talking about some failure of the passive KURS docking system at the station itself. The ship is in full working order, " Rogozin said in an interview with TASS.
He clarified that a separate commission will determine the cause of the failure. The head of the state corporation also noted that the situation showed the skill of the commander of the ship Anton Shkaplerov.
Rogozin added that Shkaplerov, having received confirmation from the MCC, successfully conducted the docking.
"The situation is normal. This is why there is a backup system, manual control capabilities, and for this we train commanders to cope with this task," the head of Roscosmos stressed.
At the same time, Rogozin assured that the equipment of the "Course" will be replaced. According to him, she is "slowly getting old."
"In general, this is a normal situation, but, nevertheless, we, of course, will now replace [the equipment] on this MIME (the Dawn module), at this docking node, so that we no longer have problems when docking," concluded the head of Roscosmos.
Earlier in the day, the launch of SOYUZ MS-19 with a movie crew was called flawless at the NASA Mission Control Center in Houston.
In orbit, the film crew intends to make a feature film in space. The picture, called "The Challenge", is a joint project of ROSCOSMOS, Channel One and the studio Yellow, Black and White.
