MOSCOW, April 6 Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft with Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin, as well as the American Frank Rubio, undocked the Russian Poisk module of the International Space Station, in about 40 minutes Prokopiev will manually dock it to the Prichal module, the operation is broadcast by Roskosmos.
Before sailing away from the station, the ship's crew closed the transfer hatches between Soyuz MS-23 and Poisk and checked their tightness. Then the cosmonauts put on the Sokol-KV2 rescue suits, took their seats in the spacecraft's descent module, closed the hatch to the utility compartment and also made sure they were tight.
Soyuz docking to the Berth module is expected at 12.23 Moscow time. After that, the crew will open the hatch to the utility compartment, take off their spacesuits, check the tightness of the transfer hatches between Soyuz and Prichal and open them. As Roskosmos explained earlier, moving the spacecraft is necessary to ensure the safety of spacewalks under the Russian program from the Poisk module, scheduled for spring-summer 2023.
Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio arrived at the ISS on September 21, 2022 on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft. Due to the fact that the ship's cooling system failed after the micrometeoroid hit the radiator, it was decided to return the crew to Earth on the next Soyuz MS-23.
The new ship docked to Poisk in automatic mode on February 26, 2023. Soyuz MS-22 also automatically undocked from the station on March 28. His descent vehicle landed in Kazakhstan a few hours later on the same day.