Expedition One Crew Plans Soyuz Shuffle Early Saturday

The Expedition One crewmembers aboard the International
Space Station plan to leave their home in orbit for a short
weekend flight. The crew needs to move its Soyuz spacecraft to
make room for a new supply ship.

Saturday, Feb. 24, NASA Television plans live coverage as the
crew undocks the Soyuz and then redocks it at a new location to
make way for an unmanned Russian Progress resupply vehicle
scheduled to visit the station at the end of the month.
Coverage and commentary will begin at 3 a.m. EST from the Space
Station Flight Control Room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center,
Houston, TX.

With Soyuz Pilot Yuri Gidzenko at the controls, and joined by
Commander Bill Shepherd and Flight Engineer Sergei Krikalev,
the Soyuz will be undocked from the station at 5:08 a.m. EST.
Gidzenko will back the Soyuz away from the aft docking port of
the Zvezda Service Module and fly around the station to redock
the Soyuz to the nadir, or earthward-facing, docking port of
the Zarya Control Module. The relocation maneuver should take
about 30 minutes to complete. Television from the Soyuz is
expected for a few minutes during the redocking over Russian
ground stations.

The repositioning of the Soyuz will set the stage for the
docking of a Russian Progress resupply vehicle to the Zvezda’s
aft docking port on Feb. 28, carrying supplies for the next
Expedition crew, which will be launched on Shuttle Discovery in
March on STS-102. That same mission will return Shepherd,
Gidzenko and Krikalev home to Earth after more than four months
in space.

NASA TV can be found on GE-2, Transponder 9C, 85 degrees West
longitude, vertical polarization, 3880 MHz, with audio at 6.8
MHz.