The space station prepares to receive the manned Starliner spacecraft

Roscosmos announced that the American Crew Dragon spacecraft has changed its docking location with the International Space Station, in preparation for the arrival of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft to the station.

A statement issued by the agency said: “On Thursday, May 2, the process of re-docking the Crew Dragon vehicle took place in preparation for the arrival of the manned Boeing CST-100 Starliner vehicle to the International Space Station, and the Crew-8 mission crew separated the vehicle from the forward docking node of the American Harmony module. The vehicle flew into space and then docked with the top node of the module itself.

The statement indicated that astronauts Alexander Grebenkin, Matthew Dominic, Michael Barratt, and Janet Epps were on board the Crew Dragon spacecraft when it carried out the maneuver in space to change its location, while astronauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and Tracy Dyson remained inside the station.

According to plans, the first manned flight of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner vehicle to the International Space Station is supposed to take place on May 7, and although the vehicle is designed to accommodate 7 astronauts, it will carry on this trip two NASA astronauts, Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams. .

The "Starliner" vehicle weighs 13 one tons, and is launched into space using Atlas V rockets. This vehicle was launched on the first unmanned flight into space on December 20, 2019, but the vehicle failed at that time to reach the International Space Station, and in May 2022 a launch was carried out. A second time, and the vehicle succeeded in docking with the station despite the problems facing the operation at the time.