MOSCOW, November 17 (RIA Novosti) -- The crew of the International Space Station (ISS) will detach the Russian Soyuz spacecraft linked to one part of the orbiting complex, and dock it with another part on November 18, a Mission Control official said Thursday.
"The re-docking will be performed tomorrow," Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said.
"According to the schedule, the crew [Valery Tokarev and William McArthur] will undock [the Soyuz] from the Pirs module at 08.45 GMT, and re-dock [the craft] with the Zarya module at 09.20 GMT," he said
Re-docking is a routine but complex procedure, which has to be performed by the crew before the undocking of manned spacecraft, and before spacewalks. In both cases, the crew has to temporarily abandon the station.
Lyndin said that the crew would deactivate all on-board systems before leaving the station for safety purposes, and reactivate them upon their return.
ISS crews have performed manual re-docking procedures six times since the first manned mission on board the station (Expedition 1) in 2000.
