The crippled Mir space station suddenly delayed a planned docking with its cargo ship yesterday because of a computer programming error, space officials said. Russia's orbiting station has been lurching from crisis to crisis. Yesterday's hitch raised the possibility of another delay in vital repairs planned for Wednesday.
"The necessary baseline data - which guides the Progress (cargo ship) towards the station - turned out to be loaded incorrectly," Mission Control flight director Vladimir Solovyov told reporters. "The onboard machine recognised this and gave us an accident warning."
Mr Viktor Blagov, deputy flight director, said the computer problems arose about three hours before Mir's scheduled 5.54 p.m. (12.54 p.m. Irish time) redocking with the seven-metre-long (23 foot) Progress.
"There is no danger. We are now studying the situation and are planning this procedure for tomorrow," he said.
The manoeuvre was to have repeated a procedure carried out on June 25th, when a different Progress vehicle docking with Mir collided with the station's Spektr module, causing a major loss of power in the worst accident of the space station's 11-year history.
Yesterday the crew began the procedure in automatic rather than manual pilot as in June, and apparently the computer recognised a problem ground controllers did not see.
"At first we didn't understand this," Mr Solovyov said. "Another matter is why all the tests we are carrying out on Earth . . . didn't recognise this."
On Saturday Mr Vasily Tsibliyev, the cosmonaut at the controls during the June accident, said money problems prevented the ailing space station being properly supplied.
"Unfortunately, many things we need on the station just aren't there," he said. "It all derives from earth, from our economy, our affairs, our poor lives. Because even that equipment needed to live aboard the station that we requested to be sent . . . it just doesn't exist on earth," he told reporters.
Mr Solovyov said yesterday's problem was purely technical and had nothing to do with Russia's financial woes. Flight engineers would easily correct the problem by sending new data to Progress and slightly changing its direction.
Mir has faced an expanding host of problems in recent months, in addition to the June 25th crash. Last month the former crew mistakenly unplugged a vital computer, sending the ship spinning in disorientation for a day.
When Mr Solovyov and Mr Vinogradov arrived at Mir earlier this month, they had to make a sudden manual docking. And when Mr Tsibliyev and his flight engineer returned to Earth on Thursday, a booster rocket that should have eased their landing failed.