ISS Crew Relocates Soyuz TMA-16

Members of the Expedition 22 crew on the International Space Station (ISS) relocated one of the two Soyuz lifeboats aboard the station today, moving it to a freshly installed Russian docking port. The maneuver, which began at 5:03 am EST, was successfully concluded at 5:24 am (1025 GMT), with the Soyuz TMA-16 space capsule being safely attached to the new Poisk module aboard the orbital facility. The move clears the way for the arrival of the Node 3 module, called Tranquility, aboard the space shuttle Endeavor early next month.

Soyuz commander and ISS flight engineer Maxim Suraev, a Russian cosmonaut, and Expedition 22 commander Jeff Williams, a NASA astronaut, performed the undocking and transfer maneuvers, while their colleagues and station mates looked at the space capsule through the station's windows. Flight engineers Oleg Kotov (RosCosmos), T.J. Creamer (NASA), and Soichi Noguchi (JAXA) took a number of pictures to document the stunning event. Though it was over in about 20 minutes, the relocation was not without peril, and everyone was on their toes.

This scheduled ISS task comes exactly a week after Expedition 22's first spacewalk, which saw Suraev and Kotob performing maintenance and calibration duties on the newly installed Poisk module. It was installed on the station at 10:41 am EST (1541 GMT), on November 12, 2009, and represents one of the last major additions that Russia will make to the international research facility. The most important addition that Poisk brought to the ISS was a fourth Russian docking port, bringing the total number of these structures to five.

An additional, American-built one houses the space shuttles when they come to visit. Four Russian ports may seem excessive, but two of them are constantly occupied by two Soyuz space capsules, which act as life boats for the ISS crew. An additional one is usually occupied by a Progress unmanned cargo spacecraft, which delivers supplies, so no free opening was available in case of an emergency flight.

As they prepare for the arrival of Endeavor, around February 9 if everything goes according to plan, the crew is getting ready for another maintenance maneuver. This Saturday, they will move the Pressurized Mating Adapter-3 (PMA3) device from the port side of the Unity node to a space-facing port. The move was scheduled after experts decided to dock the shuttle to the Earth-facing side of Unity. Creamer and Williams plan to use the Canadarm2 robotic arm for this task, Space Fellowship reports.