ISS crew completes Soyuz repositioning

The International Space Station crew successfully repositioned the Soyuz spacecraft docked at the rear of the Zvezda living quarters Tuesday.

The move was in preparation for the arrival later this month of a Russian cargo spacecraft.

With Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin at the controls, the Soyuz undocked from the Zvezda port on schedule, backing at one-tenth of a meter per second from the ISS. The Soyuz redocked with the Earth-facing Zarya module port at 3:34 p.m. EDT, five minutes ahead of schedule.

In a separate development, one of the space station's four gyroscopes used to maintain the station's orientation in space was shut down Tuesday morning after exceeding the allowed vibration limit. NASA said only three gyroscopes are needed to properly maintain the station's orientation.

Ground controllers in Houston were to perform additional diagnostic testing.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International