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MOSCOW, April 6 Russian cosmonaut Sergei Prokopiev manually docked the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft, which had undocked from the Poisk module of the International Space Station several dozen minutes earlier, to to another module «Prichal», the broadcast of the operation is carried out by Roskosmos.
Together with Prokopiev, the flight engineers of his ship were in the ship — Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Petelin and American Frank Rubio. The crew closed the transfer hatches between Soyuz MS-23 and Poisk and checked their tightness. Then the cosmonauts put on the Sokol-KV2 spacesuits, took their places in the spacecraft, closed the hatch to the utility compartment and also made sure that they were tight. The undocking took place at 11.45 Moscow time.
After docking the Soyuz to the Prichal module, Prokopiev, Petelin and Rubio will have to open the hatch to the ship's utility compartment, remove their spacesuits, and also check the tightness of the passage hatches between the Soyuz and the Prichal» and only then open them.
As Roskosmos explained earlier, moving the ship was necessary to ensure the safety of spacewalks under the Russian program from the Poisk module, scheduled for spring-summer 2023.
According to the state corporation, this was already the 51st re-docking carried out by Soyuz spacecraft at orbital stations since 1978. It was the 21st time that such an operation was performed on the ISS.
Now the crew of the 69th long-term expedition is working at the station. In addition to Prokopiev, Petelin and Rubio, it includes another Russian Andrey Fedyaev, US NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, and UAE astronaut Sultan al-Neyadi. All four arrived at the station on the American Crew Dragon on March 3.
Prokopiev, 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.