SpaceX Crew Dragon First-Ever ISS Port Relocation Planned, Four Astronauts to Free Up Space for Commercial Use

Four astronauts will relocate the US's first commercial crew port Crew Dragon Resilience on the International Space Station this Monday to allow more room for a new crew by the end of April. These astronauts are set to undock the spacecraft from its present port and re-dock it at another port by next week, according to a report from SpaceGear.

NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, Michael Hopkins, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Naguchi will perform the port relocation. The US space agency said that the relocation would involve spacecraft undocking from the forward port ISS Harmony module at 6:29 AM EST, and then re-docking it at a space-facing port at 7:15 AM EST.

NASA said in a statement, "The quartet needs to be on the vehicle in the unlikely event Resilience is unable to redock. This assures there aren't more crewmembers on the station than seats available on docked crew ships."

Freeing Up ISS Port Space for Endeavor

Moving the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft would free up port space, allowing the Crew Dragon Endeavor to dock at it, in connection with SpaceX's Crew-2 mission, which will take NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, JAXA astronaut Aki Hoshide and the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet to the ISA on April 22.

After the astronauts' arrival, NASA noted that astronauts from the Crew-1 mission would return to Earth in late April or early May, thus making the Harmony dock available. In their trip back to Earth, Crew-1 will use the Crew Dragon Endeavor spacecraft, which will utilize the ISS Harmony forward a port.

The dock free-up will provide the needed space for the Dragon cargo spacecraft that will carry equipment and solar arrays when it lifts off later by late June. This is necessary because the solar arrays can only be removed from the Dragon cargo spacecraft using a 58-foot robotic arm that could not reach Harmony's other ports.

In November last year, Crew-1 astronauts made an unprecedented journey to the ISS on board the Crew Dragon.

First-Ever Port Relocation

NASA said the event marks the first-ever port relocation involving the SpaceX Commercial Crew Dragon spacecraft. Relocating it for around 45 minutes is not a usual task for the astronauts, who spend time on the ISS for science experiments and station maintenance.

This mission is under the Commercial Crew Program, which plans six SpaceX Crew missions.

Hopkins posted a picture in a tweet with his fellow Crew-1 astronauts trying their spacesuits. Describing the port relocation, Hopkins tweeted: "We'll take a short ride in Dragon to move from the Harmony forward port to the Harmony zenith port in order to make room for our new crewmates."

NASA will live stream the port relocation at 3 AM PT on Monday.

Check out more news and information on SpaceX's Crew Dragon mission on Science Times.