The Progress M-51 cargo vessel, launched overnight Thursday from a cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in central Asia, docked automatically with the station around 2:58 am (2358 GMT Saturday), it said.

The vessel was delivering more than two tonnes of water, oxygen, food, fuel and scientific materials -- as well as unspecified Christmas presents -- to Russian Salizhan Sharipov and American Leroy Chiao.

The supplies were badly needed after earlier this month Russian space officials announced that the station was slowly running out of food and the crew could have nothing left to eat within a matter of weeks.

The space station, which had been supplied by US space shuttles until the February 2003 Columbia disaster, is now supplied only by Russian craft, which have a much smaller cargo capacity.

Had the spatial Santa Claus not arrived, the crew would have had to evacuate the station as they had only enough supplies to last until mid-January.

A German-made Rockviss robot, designed to complete repairs on the outer surface of the station, was also in the emergency supply package.

Scientists will be eager to deploy the robot, which can be controlled from earth and is seen as opening new possibilities for space exploration.

The crew had spent Christmas Day busily preparing for the delivery.

Mission Control said the crew were up at 1:00 pm Moscow time on Saturday to make the necessary preparations, including adjusting television cameras used to control the docking.

They were scheduled to sit down to Christmas dinner at 7:00 pm and await the arrival of the supply ship, which had been timed so the docking procedure would be lit by the sun.

The unloading of the vessel's 60 containers was expected to last several days.

Plans had already been made to evacuate the cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz capsule, a re-entry vehicle attached to the ISS, if the supplies could not be delivered.

For planning purposes only, a date had been set of December 30 for such an operation, should it prove necessary.

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