Space transport arrived at the station on Sunday night with a load of 400 liters of water and 200 kilograms of food, fuel, scientific equipment, and Christmas and New Year presents for the crew.
In addition, the Progress delivered a new Rockviss robot-manipulator on board the space station. The robot is designed to increase the efficiency of activities conducted by the crew.
The robot-manipulator will be installed at the end of January 2005 on the external surface of the ISS for a test run of its capabilities in the outer space.
The vehicle also delivered a Russian-made running track for the crew. The previous U.S.-made track had too many failures and the sides agreed to exchange it for a new one.
The automatic docking of the transport vehicle and the ISS occurred on Sunday at 2:58 am (Moscow time).
The Soyuz rocket with the Progress transport vehicle was launched from the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan on December 24.
According to head of the Russian space corporation Energy Yuri Semyonov, the lack of food on the ISS was caused by discrepancies in the data provided by previous ISS crews to ground control services.
"Previous crews used food supplies allocated for the current crew and did not report the details to us," Mr. Semyonov said.
He also mentioned that each crew chooses types of food supplies according to preferences of crewmembers before the space flight. "In my 40 years of work with crews, I do not recall any instance when crewmembers consumed more food supplies than they planned to. We have made certain conclusions from this incident," Mr. Semyonov emphasized.
According to ISS flight control manager Vladimir Soloviev, the next Progress transport vehicle willbe launched on February 28, 2005.
