this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2025
11 points (86.7% liked)

Spaceflight

1603 readers
52 users here now

Your one-stop shop for spaceflight news and discussion.

All serious posts related to spaceflight are welcome! JAXA, ISRO, CNSA, Roscosmos, ULA, RocketLab, Firefly, Relativity, Blue Origin, etc. (Arca and Pythom, if you must).

Other related space communities:

Related meme community:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 1 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] ptfrd@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago

Such a chonker that it'll have to be temporarily moved out of the way during a Soyuz approach in a couple of months?

Maybe ... I'm actually not sure if this is something that they'd have to do even with a smaller vehicle. Anyway, here are the basic details:

Cygnus will be briefly unberthed from the space station using the outpost’s robotic arm during the approach and docking of a crewed Russian Soyuz craft on Nov. 27.

“Cygnus is berthed to node one nadir and that’s close to the corridor for Soyuz rendezvous,” Dina Contella, the deputy manager of NASA’s ISS Program, explained during a prelaunch briefing. “So, when Soyuz is coming into dock at the SUV MRM (Mini-Research Module) one port, we’d like for safety’s sake to unberth Cygnus and hold it away from the Russian segment.”

Alternatively, mission managers might decide to fill the module with as much trash as possible and release it before the arrival of Soyuz MS-28, she said.

Now, the above quote is immediately preceded in the article by "Because of its increased size ...". But I didn't notice that point being made explicitly during said pre-launch briefing. The two relevant sections are 9:40 - 10:25 and 33:51 - 35:18. At 34:47 she simply says, "Just to be on the safe side, we're trying to keep the neighbouring port free."