US space agency NASA shared footage of port relocation at the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday. The video shows SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience’s port getting relocated as the space station prepares to welcome new crew later this month. SpaceX Crew-1 is the very first certified mission beneath NASA’s Commercial Crew Program that lifted off from Earth on November 15, 2020. On Monday, 4 astronauts relocated the Crew Dragon spacecraft to prepare for the arrival of new crew members and the upcoming delivery of solar arrays this summer season.
The footage shows NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi, undocking the Crew Dragon Resilience from the forward port of the ISS Harmony module and docking to the space-facing port.
According to NASA, the second industrial crew plan incorporates NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, JAXA’s Aki Hoshide, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet. The launch is scheduled to take location from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 22.
Why is today’s port relocation of the Crew Dragon Resilience taking place? It will prepare the @Space_Station for the planned arrival of NASA’s @SpaceX Crew-2 mission in just a handful of weeks, as properly as arrival later this summer season of a cargo Dragon delivering new solar arrays: pic.twitter.com/R6wjXqBp3x
— NASA (@NASA) April 5, 2021
After the new crew joins the mission, the Crew-1 astronauts will leave the station and return to Earth in late April or early May. The footage shared on Monday mentions that the vacant portion will serve as a docking space for a Dragon cargo spacecraft which will carry various tons of supplies.
The cargo spacecraft demands the space-facing port position to allow robotic extraction of the solar arrays from Dragon’s trunk working with Canadarm2.
It is going to be a busy handful of weeks in the ISS and Twitter appears to agree.
Lol, sounds like my driveway on a Monday morning.
— Michael Curtin (@guitarmike) April 5, 2021
Going up on April 22. Follow NASA and SpaceX. A Soyuz is also going up on April 9.
This month 2 spacecrafts going up and 2 coming down.
— Pablo Moysam D. (@PMoysam) April 5, 2021
An Elon Musk fan was fast to credit the tech billionaire for this most current NASA update.
It’s taking place trigger Elon Musk mentioned so. ????
— IG: @space.terminal (@spaceTerminal_) April 5, 2021