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An unmanned Russian Progress cargo ship, seen here on the launch pad at the Baikonour cosmodrome in June, 2010, on Friday failed to dock as planned with the International Space Station (ISS) after missing the facility, mission control said. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)
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MOSCOW, July 3 (Xinhua) -- The Russian cargo spaceship Progress M-06M, blasted off two days ago from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, has failed to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday night, said the Mission Control center outside Moscow.
The Mission Control center reported "uncontrollable rotation" during the docking attempt.
"Everything was all right at first, and the freighter started to approach the station. Something happened and it passed by," The Mission Control center's spokesman Valery Lyndin said, adding that details were so far unavailable.
Efforts to correct the situation have failed even after switching to the teleoperator control mode, which is the manual mode operated by astronauts themselves.
The ship "is moving away from us and running ahead toward the ( Zvezda service module)," ISS commander Alexander Skvortsov told the Mission Control.
He said he could see the Progress rotating uncontrollably. "I can't see the freighter, it's gone ahead," Interfax cited him as saying.
There could be possibly another attempt to dock, the center said.
"Most likely, the docking will be postponed by 24 hours," an official of the center told Interfax.
The spaceship was scheduled to dock with ISS at 20:55 Moscow time (1655 GMT) on Friday, to deliver some 2.5 tons of fuel, oxygen, scientific equipment, video and photo equipment, containers with food and water and parcels for the ISS crew.
