The astronauts on the International Space Station have already conducted five spacewalks so far this year — and now they’re going to relocate a spacecraft outside of the orbiting laboratory.
Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, along with NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, will fly the Soyuz MS-17 capsule from its current port to another one on Friday.
The maneuver will be streamed live on NASA’s TV channel and website Friday, beginning at 12:15 p.m. ET.
Ryzhikov, Kud-Sverchkov and Rubins arrived on the space station in the Soyuz capsule after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in October.
The crew members will move the spacecraft from the Rassvet module, which has an Earth-facing port, and relocate it to the Poisk docking port, which faces space. Undocking will occur at 12:38 p.m. ET and docking is expected at 1:07 p.m. ET.
This will free up the Rassvet module port for another crew arriving next month on the space station via the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft. The incoming crew includes NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Roscosmos’ cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov. They will launch April 9 from Kazakhstan.
Rubins, Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov will return to Earth in the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft on April 17.
This type of reconfiguration last occurred in August 2019 and will be the 15th Soyuz port relocation 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 from the US to the space station in November, will also return after the launch of Crew-2 next month.
This second rotation using the NASA-SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft will include 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 launch April 22, will join Crew-1 on the space station before Crew-1 returns to Earth.
