On Monday (April 5), NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts completed the first commercial port move on the International Space Station. Spaceship Crew Dragon in preparation for the arrival of the next crew.
The redeployment was carried out by NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, as well as Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi. The crew undocked the Crew Dragon, dubbed Resilience, from the space station’s Harmony module forward port at 6:30 AM ET (10:30 GMT) and reconnected to the space-facing module port at 7:08 AM ET ( 1108 GMT). …
Astronauts relocated Resilience to a different port on the space station to make way for an arriving Crew Dragon spacecraft called Endeavor later this month, which will dock with the forward port of Harmony. Arrival SpaceX Crew-2 Mission Among them are NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan MacArthur, JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshaid and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Peske. The crew is slated to launch to the space station on April 22 from the 39A launch pad of the NASA Space Center. Kennedy in Florida.
Connected: Meet Crew-1: These are 4 astronauts who fly the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
“We are very happy [moving Resilience] and we would like to congratulate the entire Expedition 64 team as well Crew-1 Dragon Team… Congratulations to the commercial crew program for 10 years. “What an amazing 10 years it has been,” Hopkins said during a call with Steve Stitch, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Manager, from the space station on Friday (April 2). “Think about where you started and where we are now – and now we’re preparing to take this car for a little spin. … We are all very happy to be a part of this. “
19 march NASA astronaut Kate Rubinstogether with two Russian cosmonauts Sergei Ryzhikov and Sergei Kud-Sverchkov, the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft was redeployed. a spacecraft from the Earth-facing port of the Rassvet station module to the Poisk port facing space. However, unlike the Soyuz maneuver, which required manual flight, the Crew Dragon is autonomous.
“It’s pretty cool and it’s just amazing when you separate it from your car, which has been your home for several months, and be able to look at it from 60 meters. [about 200 feet]- said Rubin during a call from the space station, which NASA shared on YouTube Friday (April 2).
In preparation for Monday’s move, Hopkins said he would spend his Easter Sunday making sure to clear everything of the Crew Dragon spacecraft – his version of the Easter egg hunt – as he has stayed at Resilience for the past couple of months. said during the call.
The spacecraft has been “mostly stationary” since SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts arrived at space station november 16… So the team prepared for the move by checking that the Resilience communications systems were in working order and performing suit compliance checks, which Hopkins said “went very well” during the call.
Crew 1 is set to return to Earth in late April or early May, leaving the vacant Harmony port when the Dragon cargo spacecraft arrives with supplies and the first set of new solar panels for the space station this summer. Rubins and Glover began preparing the space station for new solar panels during spacewalk 28 februarywhen you installed one of the two modification kits required to support the new arrays. The Dragon cargo spacecraft will have to dock with a space-facing port to enable robotic extraction of new solar panels from the Dragon barrel using Canadarm2, according to the announcement. NASA statement…
Today’s move maneuver was the first to move the Crew Dragon spacecraft, but it probably won’t be the last given that Crew-1’s mission is the first of six. certified crew travel NASA and SpaceX have planned this as part of the agency’s commercial crew program, according to a statement.
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