An engine problem involving the steering thrusters onboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft has delayed the arrival of the Expedition 39 crew members en route to the International Space Station (ISS).
The three crew members onboard the Soyuz spacecraft were originally supposed to arrive after a short 6 hour mission. Due to the engine problem that occurred during an orbital engine maneuver however, the crew's arrival has been delayed and the entire flight will now take around 48 hours in total.
"This longer rendezvous and docking pattern was the standard rendezvous profile until last year; this would have been the fifth rendezvous using the accelerated timeline," says NASA. The last two-day rendezvous was Expedition 34, which launched on Dec. 19, 2012, and docked to the station on Dec. 21, 2012. That Soyuz crew included NASA's Tom Marshburn, the Canadian Space Agency's Chris Hadfield and Roscosmos' Roman Romanenko."
The Expedition 39 crew members include Soyuz Commander Alexander Skvortsov, NASA astronaut Steve Swanson and Russian Federal Space Agency (Rocosmos) astronaut Oleg Artemyev. Swanson and Artemyev. Due to the delay, the crew is now scheduled to arrive on the ISS this coming Thursday.
Russian space officials are currently trying to figure out what went wrong with the Soyuz TMA-12M's steering thrusters.
"Flight controllers in Moscow are reviewing data to determine the reason the third thruster burn did not occur," says NASA. "In conversations between flight controllers in Moscow and Houston, initial information indicates the problem may have been the spacecraft was not in the proper attitude, or orientation, for the burn."
While the problem may have come as a surprise for both space agencies involved, space officials in the Moscow Mission Control Center already have a backup plan in place. According to the back-up plan, the spacecraft will arrive on the ISS at 7:58 p.m. this Thursday. Moreover, the current crew members onboard the ISS have already been made aware of the situation. Commander Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese astronaut to take command of the ISS, is currently onboard the space station with his fellow crew members Rocosmos astronaut Mikhail Tyurin and NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio.
Once Commander Skvortsov and flight engineers Swanson and Artemyev arrive on the ISS, they will spend a few months there as part of Expedition 40. Their mission will end this September. The three astronauts will officially become members of Expedition 40 once the current members of Expedition 39 (Wakata, Tyurin and Mastracchio) board the the Soyuz for their trip back to Earth.
