HOUSTON — Three members of the International Space Station crew will board a Soyuz spacecraft attached to the station and move it to a different docking port on Thursday, July 2. The journey will be broadcast live on NASA Television.
Expedition 20 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineers Mike Barratt of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will undock the Soyuz TMA-14 return spacecraft, from the Zvezda service module and fly a short distance to the Pirs docking compartment. The flight is expected to take about 30 minutes.
NASA TV coverage will begin at 4 p.m. CDT with undocking planned for 4:26 p.m.
While Padalka, Barratt and Wakata are aboard the Soyuz, Expedition 20 Flight Engineers Roman Romanenko of Russia, Bob Thirsk of the Canadian Space Agency and Frank De Winne of the European Space Agency will monitor the move from inside the station. Their Soyuz return craft, the TMA-15, is docked to the Earth-facing port of the station’s Zarya module.
The relocation of Soyuz TMA-14 opens the Zvezda docking port for the arrival of a new Russian Progress cargo vehicle in late July.
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