In an effort to accommodate the upcoming arrival of NASA's Boeing Crew Flight Test, four crew members aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are set to relocate the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft to a different docking port on Thursday, May 2nd. This relocation will make way for Boeing's Starliner spacecraft.

NASA will be providing live coverage of the move, which is scheduled to begin at 7:30 a.m. EDT, across various platforms such as NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency's website. Viewers can also stream NASA TV through social media platforms.

The team responsible for the relocation consists of NASA astronauts Matt Dominick, Mike Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, alongside Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin. The Dragon spacecraft will undock from the forward-facing port of the station's Harmony module at 7:45 a.m. Following that, it will autonomously dock with the module's space-facing port at 8:28 a.m.

This relocation operation, overseen by flight controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, aims to free up the forward-facing port of the Harmony module. The vacant port will then be available for the docking of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, as it prepares for its first flight with astronauts in May.

The Starliner will autonomously dock to the forward-facing port of the Harmony module, transporting NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the space station. This will mark the fourth port relocation of a Dragon spacecraft with crew, following previous relocations during the Crew-1, Crew-2, and Crew-6 missions.

The SpaceX Crew-8 mission launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 3rd and successfully docked with the space station on March 5th. The Crew-8 mission, part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, is expected to return this fall and serves as the eighth rotational crew mission jointly conducted by NASA and SpaceX.

For more updates on space station activities, interested individuals can follow @space_station, @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook page, ISS Instagram account, and the space station blog.

For media inquiries and contact information:
Joshua Finch / Claire O'Shea
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / claire.a.o'shea@nasa.gov

Sandra Jones / Anna Schneider
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov / anna.c.schneider@nasa.gov