Unmanned Russian spaceship suffers mishap A Russian spaceship en route to the International Space Station has a problem with a key antenna. A UNMANNED Progress spaceship racing to the International Space Station (ISS) with 2.5 tonnes of cargo on board has failed to deploy a key antenna that helps it dock with the orbiting lab in the latest hitch in Russia's space program. The incident threatens to cast a new shadow over a once-vaunted program that competed with the United States for space supremacy. Russian and US space officials said the problem occurred just as the Progress settled into orbit after blasting off aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur space station that Moscow leases from Kazakhstan. "There was a problem with one of the antennae in the Kurs (Navigation) system," Vitaly Lopota, president of the Energia space corporation that designs the Russian spacecraft, told the Interfax news agency. But Lopota stressed that the Progress cargo ship could still dock to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday as planned. "Even if the antenna fails to deploy, we will still be able to get to within 200 metres (of the ISS) and perform an automatic docking," the Energia president said. An unnamed source at Mission Control outside Moscow told news agencies that space officials were not particularly worried about the latest mishap to affect Russia's program. "Such incidents have happened before," said the official. But Russian space engineers repeatedly tried and failed to get the antenna unstuck when the Progress re-entered a stretch of its orbit in which it falls within radio contact with Mission Control. Russia's program is being watched closely by other space powers because it remains the only nation capable of transporting humans to the ISS following the 2011 retirement of the US shuttle. But the Roscosmos space agency has suffered from a string of problems in recent years that include the August 2011 explosion after lift-off of a Soyuz rocket carrying another unmanned Progress cargo craft.