Four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-8 mission transferred their Dragon capsule to a different port on the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday morning (May 2).
Paving the way for Boeing aircraft Starliner capsuleIt will arrive at the ISS on May 8.
The DragonNamed Try, launched from the forward-facing port of the station's Harmony block at 8:52 a.m. EDT (1252 GMT) on Thursday. Endeavor autonomously docked with Harmony's space-facing port Zenith at 9:46 a.m. EDT (1346 GMT).
read more: SpaceX Crew-8 Spaceflight: Live Updates
The transfer operation was delayed by about an hour due to communication problems with the capsule.
The maneuver opened up Harmony's forward-facing port for Boeing's Starliner capsule, which is scheduled to launch on its first crew mission on Monday (May 6).
The Starliner mission, known as Crew Flight Test, will send NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the ISS for a roughly 10-day stay.
SpaceX's Crew-8 was launched into orbit on March 3. As its name suggests, Crew-8 is the eighth operational crewed mission that SpaceX has flown to the ISS for NASA. Its four crew members are NASA's Matthew Dominik, Michael Barrett and Janet Epps, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, who will stay on the station for six months.
Jupiter's move marked the first time Dominique, Barratt, Epps, and Grebenkin boarded Endeavour.
This is the fourth such transfer of a Crew Dragon capsule on the ISS, after similar maneuvers during the Crew-1, Crew-2 and Crew-6 missions, NASA officials wrote. Upgrade..
“Total coffee junkie. Tv ninja. Unapologetic problem solver. Beer expert.”