Saturday, June 15, 2013

Laser reflectors on the ISS worked cleanly when linked to an ATV-4 - Reuters

Korolev (Moscow Region), June 15 – RIA Novosti. Laser reflectors on the service module of the service module “Zvezda” of the International Space Station (ISS), which on Saturday successfully docked with the European cargo spacecraft ATV- 4 “Albert Einstein”, worked regularly, without fail, told the head of the European Space Agency in Russia Rene Pishel.

According to him, experts were fears that the docking with the ISS Russian cargo spacecraft “Progress M-19M” (April 26), which was not revealed rendezvous system antenna, the antenna could hurt one of the laser reflectors. He explained that if this were to happen, and a laser reflector does not work, then the European cargo spacecraft ATV-4 is not able to dock with the station and he would have to hang around her.

cargo ship

© RIA Novosti Infographics

cargo spaceships

“For ATV-4 docking with the ISS need three working laser reflector. distance between the antenna of” Progress “and the reflector is very small, so (when the Russian ship docking with the station), it was feared that could hurt the reflector antenna. Now, however, we saw that all reflectors are working, so the ATV-4 docked with the ISS was successful, “- said Pishel.

space truck “Progress M-19M” was docked to the ISS on April 26 of this year in the backup automatically. Before joining the ship to the station there was a problem related to the fact that the antenna system approach “course” was not revealed. Antenna System “course” is a small device that sits on the side of the end of the docking mechanism of “Progress”. It was not revealed in the output of “truck” into orbit on April 24.

According to the website, after the removal of the ship from docking station module “Zvezda” at 17.58 MSK Tuesday antenna “Course” opened.

Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov, Fedor and Alexander Jurchihin Misurkin took pictures removing the ship to determine if the antenna is not entered “Course” in contact with the elements of the docking port on the ISS.

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