Astronauts relocate SpaceX Crew Dragon to a new port at the Space Station to make room for a Dragon cargo shipment

NASA astronauts had a busy weekend working at the International Space Station (ISS). On Saturday, May 6, they relocated SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft to a new port at the ISS to make room for an upcoming Dragon cargo shipment from Earth. SpaceX Crew-6 crewmembers NASA astronauts Steve Bowen and Woody Hoburg, United Arab Emirates (UAE) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev performed the undocking operation. The crew put on their spacesuits and got inside the spacecraft. They undocked from the space-facing port of the ISS Harmony module at 7:10 a.m. EDT and docked to Station’s forward Harmony port at 8:01 a.m. EDT. 

Live Now: The #Crew6 astronauts are relocating their @SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to a new docking port on the @Space_Station ahead of a cargo resupply mission. Undocking is scheduled for 7:10am ET (1110 UTC), with redocking targeted for 7:53am (1153 UTC). https://t.co/fQlTDFNKAr

— NASA (@NASA) May 6, 2023

The relocation operation was monitored by ground controllers on Earth working at Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, as well as SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. “This was the 27th spacecraft relocation in space station history,” said NASA representatives, “The move made room for the arrival of the uncrewed SpaceX Dragon carrying cargo to station as part of the company’s 28th Commercial Resupply Services [CRS-28] mission for NASA, targeted to launch in June.” 

Relocating the Crew Dragon was necessary because the ‘Canadarm2’ operates near the port that was freed up, this robotic arm needs to be able to reach out to grab the cargo inside the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship's trunk. The CRS-28 mission will deliver a wide variety of cargo to the Space Station, including supplies to perform science experiments in microgravity, hardware, and a set of ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays, known as iROSAs, which are designed to increase the orbiting laboratory’s power supply. The astronauts will perform a spacewalk in the near-future to install the iROSAs. Last week, UAE astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi became the first Arab to ever perform a spacewalk. He worked to upgrade the power system and saw incredible views of planet Earth, pictured below. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 astronauts launched to the ISS on March 2 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. They are scheduled to return to Earth sometime in August. 

Last week, @Astro_Alneyadi became the first Arab to perform a spacewalk. Congratulations to all of the UAE on this success! 🥳

The spacewalk was a continuation of power supply upgrades to the @Space_Station for research and operations. https://t.co/5jGqbz3edG

— ISS Research (@ISS_Research) May 3, 2023

 

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Featured Image Source: SpaceX