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Russia ditches 20-year-old space station module to clear way for lab's arrival - CBS News

Russia ditches 20-year-old space station module to clear way for lab's arrival - CBS News

Russia ditches 20-year-old space station module to clear way for lab's arrival - CBS News
Jul 26, 2021 1 min, 13 secs

A Russian Progress cargo ship undocked from the International Space Station early Monday, taking with it the two-decades-old Pirs airlock and docking compartment to clear the way for Thursday's arrival of Russia's new Nauka multipurpose lab module.

Undocking originally was planned for last Friday, two days after Nauka's launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, but problems with the lab's navigation and propulsion systems prompted Russian flight controllers to delay Pirs' departure.

It served as a docking port for visiting Soyuz crew ships and Progress freighters for nearly 20 years and as an airlock for Russian spacewalks.

The much larger 44,000-pound Nauka module features an airlock and docking port, expanded crew quarters, research space, an additional toilet, oxygen generator, solar arrays and a European Space Agency-built robot arm.

Assuming no problems are found, the lab module will complete its rendezvous with the space station Thursday, moving in for docking at Zvezda's Earth-facing port at 9:24 a.m.

Nauka's docking will come the day before a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket launches a Boeing CST-100 Starliner crew capsule to the station for an unpiloted test flight.

and partner-agency astronauts to and from the space station on a commercial basis, helping end NASA's post-shuttle reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft for crew transportation.

An initial Starliner test flight in December 2019 had major software problems, prompting Boeing to launch a second unpiloted test flight before the ship's first planned launch with a crew on board late this year or early next year.

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