SpaceX's Crew-8 astronauts move Dragon at the ISS to make way for Boeing's Starliner

Mike Wall
·2 min read
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Dragon approaches the ISS during a redocking mission on May 2.
Dragon approaches the ISS during a redocking mission on May 2.

The four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-8 mission moved their Dragon capsule to a different port at the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday morning (May 2).

The operation was to make way for Boeing's Starliner capsule, which will arrive at the ISS on May 8.

The Dragon, named Endeavour, began undocking from the forward-facing port of the station's Harmony module on Thursday at 8:52 a.m. EDT (1252 GMT). Endeavour autonomously docked with Harmony's space-facing port, Zenith, at 9:46 a.m. EDT (1346 GMT).

Read more: SpaceX Crew-8 astronaut mission: Live updates

The relocation operation was delayed by around an hour due to communication issues with the capsule.

a white conical capsule is seen docked at the international space station, with the blackness of space in the background.
a white conical capsule is seen docked at the international space station, with the blackness of space in the background.

The maneuver opened up Harmony's forward-facing port for Boeing's Starliner capsule, which is scheduled to launch on its first-ever crewed mission on Monday (May 6).

The Dragon Endeavour space capsule 60 meters from the ISS on May 2 as it moves to make way for Starliner
The Dragon Endeavour space capsule 60 meters from the ISS on May 2 as it moves to make way for Starliner

That Starliner mission, known as Crew Flight Test, will send NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the ISS for a roughly 10-day stay.

SpaceX's Crew-8 launched to the orbiting lab on March 3. As its name suggests, Crew-8 is the eighth operational crewed mission that SpaceX has flown to the ISS for NASA. Its four crewmates are NASA's Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeannette Epps and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, who will live aboard the station for six months.

Thursday's move marked the first time Dominick, Barratt, Epps and Grebenkin all climbed aboard Endeavour.

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This was the fourth such relocation for a crewed Dragon capsule at the ISS, after similar maneuvers during the Crew-1, Crew-2, and Crew-6 missions, NASA officials wrote in an update..