In a Saturday statement, explaining to the unmanned Progress supply ship’s failed docking attempt at the International Space Station (ISS), Russian engineers said that the problem apparently resulted from some radio interference.

In a further elaboration, the officials said that that the abort was apparently triggered by interference between the KURS automated rendezvous system and the backup manual system TORU’s television transmitter – seemingly the system was activated around the time when the docking was aborted.

As a result of the interference, the flight computers of the Progress were prompted by a “cancel dynamic operations” command to terminate the automated approach.

Due to the aborted docking attempt - which occurred nearly 20 minutes before the Russian-built Progress 38 craft’s Friday-scheduled, 12.58 p. m. EDT, docking at the Zvezda command module’s aft port -, the craft flew safely past the station, rotating bit-by-bit to keep its solar arrangements face on to the sun.

Meanwhile, according to the officials, the test of the cargo ship – post the aborted docking attempt – indicate that the ship is in good health and that its automated rendezvous system is functioning normally.

As such, a second docking attempt by the unmanned re-supply craft – which took off from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome on Wednesday – has been scheduled for Sunday, 12.17 p. m. EDT.