KOROLYOV, Moscow Region. Nov 29 (Interfax-AVN) - Cosmonauts Salizhan Sharipov and Leroy Chiao are preparing to undock the Souyz-TMA-5 spacecraft from the International Space Station, an Interfax-Military News Agency correspondent reports from the Russian Mission Control Center.
The crew of the ISS went into Soyuz, sealed the hatches and are preparing to undock, a Center spokesman said.
According to him, the undocking procedure is scheduled for 12:29 p.m. Moscow time (0929 GMT).
The astronauts will move to a safe distance from the station, approach the Zarya module and dock to its docking unit at approximately 1:00 p.m. Moscow (1000 GMT).
It is necessary to redock the spacecraft from the Pirs air lock to Zarya to allow two space-walks in store for the astronauts on January 25 and some time in March 2005. The date for the second space-walk will be specified later.
Expedition 10 reached the ISS October 16. The crew docked manually due to a malfunction of automatic systems. A special commission was formed to investigate the case and come to a conclusion that the failure was caused by the deviation of one of the Soyuz-TMA-5 spacecraft's four engines that lacked power. Also, there was another malfunction in the unit measuring the spacecraft's acceleration: it fed an error to the computer aboard. All malfunctions were removed before redocking.