EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated at 1:20 PM EDT (1720 GMT) after pairing.
Two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut were attached to their Soyuz spacecraft on Friday and moved the capsule to a different port on the International Space Station, freeing the arrival of a new crew next month.
Russian commander Sergey Ryzhikov manually piloted the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft during the displacement maneuver. Cosmonaut Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins were also on board the spaceship.
All three crew members launched in the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft in October and are scheduled to return to Earth on April 17. The Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft has custom seat upholstery for each crew member, and all three were on board for the displacement maneuver Friday, ready to return to Earth in case of problems reconnecting to the space station.
The Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft detached from the space station’s Russian Rassvet module Thursday at 12:38 a.m. EDT (1638 GMT). Rassvet is located in the lower part, or the Earth-facing side, of the Russian part of the space station.
Ryzhikov, a 46-year-old former Russian Air Force fighter pilot, flew the Soyuz spacecraft away from the Rassvet module. After receding to a distance of about 40 meters, Ryzhikov performed a flight maneuver around the rear of the space station to reach a position above the complex surrounding it.
The commander then guided the Soyuz spacecraft to manual docking with the Poisk module on the top, or space-facing side, of the Russian portion of the space station. Docking took place at 1:12 PM EDT (1712 GMT) to complete the 34-minute maneuver.
The disconnection, flying around, and reconnecting all happened while the Soyuz and the space station flew around the world at a speed of about 5 miles per second.
The crew relocated the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft to pave the way for the next Soyuz mission to dock with the Rassvet module after launch on April 9 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Russian commander Oleg Novitskiy, flight engineer Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei will launch on the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft. Novitskiy and his crew will replace the crew of the Soyuz MS-17 on the space station before their return home on April 17.
Russian officials want the Soyuz MS-18 mission to dock with the Rassvet module, not Poisk, so cosmonauts can use Poisk for a spacewalk later this year in preparation for the arrival of Russia’s Nauka laboratory module.
The Space Station’s Poisk and Pirs modules also serve as docking ports and airlocks for spacewalks. A Progress supply vessel that arrived at the station last month will remove the Poisk module later this year to make way for the Nauka lab at the bottom docking position on the Zvezda service module.
The Nauka lab module will be launched in July from Baikonur with a Russian Proton missile. It will be the main addition to the Russian part of the space station since 2000, when the Zvezda module itself was launched.
This was the 19th relocation of the Soyuz port in the history of the International Space Station, and the first since August 2019.
Ryzhikov, Kud-Sverchkov and Rubins are currently living on the space station with four crew members launched in November aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Dragon Commander Mike Hopkins, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Soichi Noguchi and Shannon Walker will climb aboard their Crew Dragon capsule on April 5 to perform a similar displacement maneuver, freeing the space station’s forward port for the arrival of the next Crew Dragon on April 23.
Unlike the Soyuz move, the Crew Dragon will automatically disengage and dock, with Hopkins and his crewmembers monitoring systems ready to take over manual control if needed.
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