Russia's Progress MS-33 cargo spacecraft to dock with ISS in

MOSCOW, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Russia's Progress MS-33 cargo spacecraft is expected to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday in manual mode, Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos said Sunday.

According to flight control for the ISS Russian segment, one antenna of the Kurs system, which is used for automatic docking of the spacecraft, failed to fully deploy after the spacecraft's launch earlier in the day.

Specialists are monitoring the spacecraft's flight parameters and preparing for a manual docking by the crew aboard the Russian segment of the ISS, Roscosmos said.

Cosmonaut Sergey Kud-Sverchkov is expected to carry out the manual docking. Oleg Kononenko, head of the Cosmonaut Training Center, said manual docking is routinely practiced and considered a straightforward task.

Launched atop a Soyuz-2.1a rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Progress MS-33 is expected to dock with the Russian segment's Poisk module, delivering more than 2.5 tonnes of cargo.