An unmanned Russian cargo ship carrying more than 2.5 tons of supplies, equipment and gifts was set to dock Sunday at the international space station, officials said, according to AP. The Progress M-61, which lifted off Thursday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, will moor at the orbiting outpost at about 10:40 p.m. (1840 GMT), Russia's Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said. The docking will be performed in automatic mode, but the station's crew will be ready to take manual controls if necessary, Lyndin said. The ship is delivering oxygen, water, food and scientific equipment to the station's crew _ Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov, and U.S. astronaut Clayton Anderson. The cargo ship is also carrying two spare computers to back up those that failed in June, briefly disabling orientation and oxygen production on the Russian side of the space station. The breakdown was quickly fixed, and the computers have since been working normally. The breakdown in June was apparently caused by a spike in static electricity while power cables were being hooked up to the station's new solar panels. The crew unplugged and then reconnected the power feed between the U.S. and Russian sections and rebooted the computers, fixing the problem. Engineers also changed the software to make sure the problem was fixed. Along with other cargo, the spaceship is also carrying books, movies, gifts and other personal items for the crew.
