NASA TV coverage is underway as three crew members aboard the International Space Station take a short trip inside the Soyuz MS-23 to relocate the spacecraft from one docking port to another.
Undocking is scheduled at 4:45 a.m. EDT with redocking planned at 5:23 a.m. Relocation activities will air live on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.
The Soyuz MS-23, with Expedition 69 crew members Frank Rubio of NASA, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin aboard, will undock from the Poisk module on the space-facing side of the complex, and redock to the Prichal module on the Earth-facing side of the outpost.
Prokopyev, the Soyuz commander, will manually fly the spacecraft away from Poisk for its redocking to Prichal. He will be strapped into the descent module of the Soyuz with Petelin seated to his left and Rubio to his right.
This will be the 26th spacecraft relocation in station history. The move will make room for the arrival of the uncrewed Roscosmos Progress 84 cargo spacecraft later this year and frees the Poisk airlock for the upcoming Roscosmos spacewalks in April and May.
Rubio, Prokopyev, and Petelin are scheduled to return to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft upon undocking Sept. 27.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
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Why must all three crew members be aboard for a relocation? Why not just Prokopyev?
There must be enough crew vehicles docked to the space station to provide an evacuation capability for all crew members in the unlikely event of an emergency. Therefore, Prokopyev and his crewmates Dmitri Petelin and Frank Rubio participated in the Soyuz relocation maneuver together.
Thanks! I suppose that also applies to today’s redocking of the Dragon Resilience and the Expedition 69 crew.
Yes. The crew ships also act as “life boats” in case of an unlikely emergency requiring evacuation of the space station. The same crew that launched to space on Crew Dragon also boarded the crew ship for the redocking maneuver to ensure no one is stranded aboard the space station in the event of an emergency.