MOSCOW, May 2. /TASS/. The Crew-8 mission’s team, which includes Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, has docked its Crew Dragon spacecraft to another port ahead of the first crewed test flight of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, Roscosmos has said.
"The US Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying the Crew-8 mission has been moved to another port of the International Space Station. The ship undocked from the front port of the Harmony module of the American segment of the ISS, circled the station and docked to the upper port of the same module," the news release reads.
Grebenkin and his colleagues from NASA - astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps - were on the Crew Dragon during the maneuver. Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko (TASS special correspondent on the ISS), Nikolay Chub and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson stayed on the ISS.
The first crewed flight of Boeing Starliner is scheduled for May 7. Although the spaceship can accommodate up to seven crew members, Starliner will carry only two NASA astronauts, Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, to the ISS on a test flight.
Starliner has a mass of 13 tons and is put into orbit by Atlas V launch vehicles. The spacecraft was first launched in the crewless mode to the ISS on December 20, 2019, from Cape Canaveral. A second test flight was successfully accomplished in May 2022, despite some problems encountered in the process.