Progress 23 .. Space.com has best news coverage

[bobw]

I have read a lot of news articles today about the docking glitch. Tariq Malik's article is the only one which noted "photographs of the Progress supply ship relayed to Earth by the Expedition 14 crew apparently showed that the antenna was in fact retracted", explaining why they finished latching Progress to the station. Everybody else made it seem like there was some kind of problem but they just crossed their fingers and latched her up.<br /><br />Big kudos to Tariq Malik for telling us why. Way to go Tariq! <br /><br />http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/061026_prog23_docking.html <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[erioladastra]

Well there was actually a serious problem. The Kurs antenna did not appear to retract and the hooks could not be latched. Therefore, ISS could not resume attitude control. Without attitude control power levels were dropping sicne the arrays were not getting maximum light. A lot of stuff had to be powered down. After some manual commands the antenna was retracted and the SM hooks were driven. However, the progress hooks have not (were to be done today so maybe by now). It was a rather large impact to the station but everything was carefully controlled.