The crew members boarded the Soyuz spacecraft Thursday morning, initiating the move at 3:20 p.m. EDT with cosmonaut Oleg Kotov piloting the spacecraft to the aft port of the Zvezda service module. That move freed the Zarya nadir, or Earth-facing, port for the planned Oct. 12 arrival of Expedition 16.

The Soyuz re-docked with the space station at 3:47 p.m. EDT while 211 miles above western Africa, National Aeronautics and Space Administration controllers in Houston said.

The Soyuz was re-located about 80 feet from where it had previously been docked, despite having traveled about a third of the way around the world while doing so. The re-docking procedure was supervised by Russian controllers in Moscow.