Expedition 69’s three crew members had a short working day Wednesday and went to bed early Thursday morning before the Union crew redeployed their ship. The rest of the International Space Station (ISS) crew was busy during the day doing biological research and packing the cargo ship.

Two Roscosmos cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut will take a short walk around the space station inside the Soyuz MS-23 crew spacecraft early Thursday, transporting it from the Search Module to the Docking Module. Commander Serhii Prokopiev will take the MS-23 to the new docking port, surrounded by flight engineers Dmytro Petelin and Frank Rubio. The move unlocks the Poisk airlock for future Roscosmos spacewalks in the Orlan spacesuits and frees the docking port for the upcoming Progress 84 ISS resupply mission.

The three-crewed Soyuz spacecraft will leave the port of Poisk at 04:45 ET on Thursday, maneuver behind and below the space station, then dock at the Earth-facing port of Berth at 05:23 a.m. after checking for tightness and pressure. . Once finished, the trio will re-enter the orbiting lab and go to bed early before continuing their space exploration missions on Friday.

A US space cargo ship is being packed with cargo before it sets sail and is returning to Earth later this month. Rubio from the UAE (United Arab Emirates) and flight engineer Sultan Alneyadi began loading the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship with completed scientific experiments and used station equipment by scientists and engineers to be picked up and analyzed by scientists and engineers on the ground. Dragon docked with the orbiting lab on March 16 with 6,200 pounds of research equipment, crew supplies, and other cargo to replenish the station’s crew.