Expedition 65 crew to relocate Soyuz to free parking space for another spacecraft

The relocation will free the Rassvet port for the Soyuz MS-19, which will carry three Russian crew members, commander and cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and spaceflight participants Klim Shipenko and Yulia Peresild, to the station on Tuesday, October 5.

Expedition 65 crew members including Mark Vande Hei of NASA and Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov of the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos are gearing up for a short ride aboard a Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft on Tuesday, September 28, to relocate the spacecraft to free parking space for the docking of another Soyuz spacecraft - Soyuz MS-19.

The crewmates will undock from the space station's Earth-facing Rassvet module at 8:21 a.m. EDT and then dock again at the Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module at 9 a.m. The relocation will free the Rassvet port for the Soyuz MS-19, which will carry three Russian crew members, commander and cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and spaceflight participants Klim Shipenko and Yulia Peresild, to the station on Tuesday, October 5.

Live coverage of this event will begin at 8 a.m. on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency's website. According to the U.S. space agency, this will be the 20th Soyuz port relocation in station history and the first since March 2021.

On Sept. 28, three @Space_Station crew members will board a Soyuz spacecraft and relocate it, freeing a parking space for the next Soyuz scheduled to launch Oct. 5. Live relocation coverage will begin at 8am ET: https://t.co/QCJ35c31m5 pic.twitter.com/6aNfLG4OiT

— NASA (@NASA) September 22, 2021