Cargo Ship Carrying Holiday Gifts Docks At International Space Station

MOSCOW (AP) _ An unmanned Russian cargo ship carrying 2 tons of supplies including holiday gifts, docked Wednesday at the international space station, officials said. <br/><br/>The Progress M-62, which

Wednesday, December 26th 2007, 9:55 am

By: News On 6

MOSCOW (AP) _ An unmanned Russian cargo ship carrying 2 tons of supplies including holiday gifts, docked Wednesday at the international space station, officials said.

The Progress M-62, which lifted off Sunday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, docked at the orbiting outpost at 11:14 a.m., Russia's Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said.

The ship delivered food, including fruit and vegetables, drinking water, fuel, equipment, oxygen and Christmas and New Year's gifts for the crew _ U.S. astronauts Peggy Whitson and Daniel Tani and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.

Gifts are traditionally given in Russia on New Year's Day. Russians celebrate Orthodox Christmas on Jan. 7.

The gifts carried to the space station included birthday presents for Malenchenko, who turned 46 on Saturday, Lyndin said.

Tani was supposed to fly home aboard the shuttle Atlantis last week, but that flight was postponed until January due to a fuel gauge problem. The day he was supposed to return home, his 90-year-old mother was killed when a train struck her car outside Chicago.