The unmanned Soyuz MS-14, carrying supplies and Fedor, a humanoid robot, has successfully docked at the International Space Station (ISS) after the first attempt went awry due to a technical glitch.
The docking went off without a hitch early on Tuesday morning Moscow time (03:08 UTC) as space enthusiasts around the world watched Fedor’s second shot at docking at the ISS.
The mission was initially scheduled for Saturday but was aborted after a rendezvous system, known as Kurs, malfunctioned.
On a manned mission, the crew can take control and dock manually in such circumstances, but Fedor was unable to steer the spaceship on his own.
The ISS crew had two days to fix the flaw. They did so by relocating the Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft that was already at the station to another dock, thus freeing a fully functioning dock for Fedor’s second try on Monday night.
