The International Space Station crew will take a brief ride around their home next Tuesday with NASA-TV providing live coverage of the short journey.
Expedition 14 Cmdr. Mike Lopez-Alegria, flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter will shut down vital station systems and undock their Soyuz spacecraft from its port at the aft end of the ISS's Zvezda Service Module, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.
They will then take a 30-minute trip, relocating the Soyuz to the Earth-facing docking port on the station's Zarya module. The maneuver will free Zvezda's docking port for the arrival of a Russian Progress cargo spacecraft this month.
Undocking is scheduled at 3:11 p.m. Tuesday, with re-docking planned at approximately 3:39 p.m., officials at NASA's ISS Mission Control in Houston said.
Copyright 2006 by United Press International
