MOSCOW, September 28. /TASS/: Russia's crewed spacecraft Yuri Gagarin (Soyuz MS-18) has been docked to the multipurpose laboratory module Nauka.
This is the first-ever crewed spacecraft to have been docked with Nauka, which became part of the ISS on July 29. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov and NASA' Mark Vande Hei are on board. The docking was manual.
Roscosmos said this time, the spacecraft remained detached from the ISS during redocking for 42 minutes. The space corporation earlier explained the redocking was required for vacating the port of the module Rassvet for the crewed spacecraft Soyuz MS-19, which on October 5 is to deliver to the ISS cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, actress Yulia Peresild and film director Klim Shipenko.
Earlier, Novitsky said the crew members were thoroughly getting ready for the redocking. Novitsky, Dubrov and Vande Hei practiced the forthcoming tasks, checked the equipment and held consultations with specialists a Mission Control. The training lasted for three hours.
