Soyuz Crew Ship Undocks to Begin Port Relocation

The Russian Soyuz MS-18 undocked from the Rassvet module on the International Space Station at 8:21 a.m. EDT. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy, who is the commander of the Soyuz spacecraft, and Pyotr Dubrov along with NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, are aboard the spacecraft for the short trip to a nearby parking space. The trio are relocating the Soyuz to the new “Nauka” Multipurpose Laboratory Module and are expected to dock again at 9 a.m. Nauka arrived at the station in July and was attached to the station’s Zvezda module, providing a new laboratory and robotic arm aboard the orbiting outpost to conduct experiments and store scientific instruments. In addition, Nauka provides an additional sleeping area and toilet for station crew members. Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.