Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, along with NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, will fly the Soyuz MS-17 capsule from the current port to another on Friday.
Ryzhikov, Kud-Sverchkov and Rubins arrived on the space station in the Soyuz capsule after its launch in October from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The crew members will move the spacecraft from the Rassvet module, which has a Earth-facing port, and move it to the Poisk port, which faces outer space. The disconnect will take place at 12:38 p.m. ET and the pairing is expected at 1:07 p.m. ET.
This frees up the Rassvet module port for another crew arriving at the space station next month via the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft. The incoming crew consists of NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and the cosmonauts from Roscosmos, Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov. They will be launched from Kazakhstan on April 9.
Rubins, Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov will return to Earth on April 17 in the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft.
This type of reconfiguration last took place in August 2019 and will be the 15th relocation of the Soyuz port in the 20-year history of astronauts living on the space station.
Members of the historic NASA-SpaceX Crew-1, including NASA astronauts Victor Glover Jr., Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who launched to the space station from the US in November, will also returning after the launch of Crew-2 next month.
This second rotation using the NASA-SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft includes NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet.
Crew-2, which could be launched on April 22, will join Crew-1 on the space station before Crew-1 returns to Earth.