Soyuz crew overcomes glitch to dock with space station

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft streaked into space and chased down the International Space Station Tuesday, but a problem with the ferry ship's automated rendezvous system forced commander Yuri Malenchenko to take over manual control at the last minute. After backing away and assessing the ship's alignment and control, he deftly guided the craft in for docking at the lab's Rassvet module to complete a four-orbit rendezvous. While manual dockings are relatively rare, Malenchenko, one of Russia's most experienced cosmonauts and a veteran of five previous flights, had no problem lining back up on the Rassvet docking target and the ship nosed into the attachment mechanism at 12:33 p.m. EST (GMT-5). More

(Source: CBS News - Dec 15)