In a planned mission, three ISS crew members took their Soyuz out for a ride around the ISS. Why? Did they want to show Sandra Bullock’s character in Gravity how it’s really done? Not exactly. Instead, it’s actually the astronaut equivalent of moving your car out of a parking space so your roommate can park his. Only we’re dealing with Soyuz spacecrafts as cars. And the ISS as your apartment. And oh yeah, space.
Basically, Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineers Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano undocked their Soyuz spacecraft from the Earth-facing side of the station so another trio of astronauts could arrive in their own Soyuz from Earth and dock it to the ISS next week. You can see the spacecraft detach above. The full NASA video is below.
Astronauts, they’re just like us!
