Russian astronauts 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.
Ryzhikov, Kud-Sverchkov and Rubins arrived at 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 gate, and to the Poisk plant gate, which looks into space. Disconnection takes place at 12:38 ET and docking is expected at 13:07 ET.
This will free up the Rassvet module gateway for another crew that will arrive at the space station next month via the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft. The incoming crew includes NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Roscosmos’ cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov. They start April 9 from Kazakhstan.
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 is the 15th shift of Soyuz Harbor in the 20-year history of astronauts living in the space station.
Members of the historic NASA SpaceX Crew-1, including NASA astronauts Victor Glover Jr., Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who launched from the US to the space station in November, will also after the launch of Crew-2 next month.
This second rotation with the NASA SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft will include NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, the astronaut of the Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and the astronaut of the European Space Agency Thomas Pesquet.
Crew-2, which could launch on April 22, will join Crew-1 on the space station before Crew-1 returns to Earth.