MOSCOW, August 5 (RIA Novosti) - The undocking of the Rafaello cargo module from the International Space Station (ISS) for transfer to the Discovery shuttle will start at 2:30 p.m. (Moscow time) Friday, a NASA expert at the Mission Control Center near Moscow said.
The operation, originally scheduled for Thursday but later postponed until Friday, will take about an hour and a half.
The Italian cargo module contains equipment that has been scheduled to be brought back to Earth. The expert said the module first would be undocked from the American segment of the ISS and then moved to Discovery's payload compartment with the use of the Canadarm shuttle remote manipulator system.
According to the NASA expert, Discovery will be carrying dismantled components of the Russian Kurs approach-and-docking system back to Earth.
He said it was a common procedure because the expensive Kurs systems could be reused on Soyuz spacecraft.
