The UAE's Sultan Al Neyadi and his fellow astronauts will put their parking skills to the test this weekend, to make room for the arrival of a cargo craft bringing supplies to the International Space Station.
The Nasa and SpaceX Crew-6 team — made up of Dr Al Neyadi, US astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg and Russia's cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — will on Saturday relocate the Dragon capsule that carried them to the ISS.
They will undock from the space-facing port of the station's Harmony Module at about 3pm GST, moving the capsule to the forward Harmony port an estimated 43 minutes later.
The switch, supported by the Mission Control Centre at Nasa's Johnson Space Centre in Houston, will create space for the docking of the Dragon cargo craft, which is set to blast off in June.
The move will involve the astronauts donning their spacesuits to enter the capsule before carefully flying it a short distance to its new docking position. It will be the latest project in what has been a busy time in space for Dr Al Neyadi.
On Friday, he floated into the history books as the first person from the Arab world to complete a spacewalk. He completed the six-and-a-half hour trek, after exiting the ISS on Friday at 5.41pm GST with colleague Mr Bowen, and re-entered the orbiting laboratory at about 11.40pm.
The pair carried out two crucial tasks during their maintenance assignment, including preparing a structure on the station’s exterior for a future solar array installation.
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