MOSCOW. July 3 (Interfax-AVN) - The Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft has been successfully transferred from the Zvezda service module of the International Space Station (ISS) to the Pirs docking port, Mission Control Center spokesman Valery Lyndin told Interfax.
"The spacecraft's autonomous flight continued for about 25 minutes. It was piloted by Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka. Astronauts Michael Barrett and Koichi Wakata helped him," Lyndin said.
All three seats aboard the Soyuz spacecraft were occupied by the station's crewmembers in compliance with security requirements, in order to prevent a situation where the spaceship would not be able to dock with the orbiting outpost again for technical reasons, the spokesman said. In this case, the ISS crew would have had to return to earth.
There were three people - Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, astronaut from Belgium Franc De Winne and Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk - on board the ISS at the time of the re-docking operation.
The Soyuz spaceship was transferred to the Pirs docking port because the docking port of the Zvezda module will be used to accept Russia's Progress cargo carrier, which is due to lift off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on July 24.
It will be the last cargo spacecraft equipped with analog control systems. Only cargo carriers with digital control systems will be used after this launch.