Four International Space Station (ISS) crew members will climb aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on Thursday and take it on a very short journey.
The plan is for NASA astronauts Matt Dominick, Mike Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, to relocate the Crew Dragon to a different port to make way for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which is set to fly its first astronauts in a launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, May 6, before arriving at the ISS on Wednesday, May 8.
NASA will live stream Thursday’s relocation procedure, which will take about 45 minutes to complete. Read on for full details on how to watch.
The relocation maneuver will be supported by flight controllers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and SpaceX personnel in Hawthorne, California. It will be the fourth port relocation of a Dragon spacecraft with a crew, NASA said, following previous relocations involving SpaceX’s Crew-1, Crew-2, and Crew-6 missions.
The flight of the Crew Dragon during the maneuver will look slow, but in reality both the spacecraft and the space station are hurtling around Earth at a speed of just over 17,000 mph.
The Starliner launch is highly anticipated among those who have been following the development of Boeing’s spacecraft. Upon its arrival at the ISS, it will dock autonomously to the forward-facing port of the Harmony module, bringing NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the space station.
How to watch
NASA will provide live coverage of the Crew Dragon’s relocation starting at 7:30 a.m. (ET) on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency’s website. You can also watch the operation via the player embedded at the top of this page.
The Crew Dragon crew will undock from the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at 7:45 a.m. (ET) before connecting autonomously with the module’s space-facing port at 8:28 a.m. (ET).
