All eight docking ports on the International Space Station (ISS) are occupied for the first time in 25 years, according to NASA. This rare 'orbital traffic jam' occurred after Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft was repositioned to the station's Unity module, filling the final open port. The eight visiting spacecraft currently at the ISS include vehicles from the United States, Russia, and Japan, consisting of multiple SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, the Cygnus XL cargo craft, JAXA's new HTV-X1 cargo vehicle, two Russian Soyuz crew spacecraft, and two Progress cargo ships. It has been an active week for supply deliveries and crew movements. On Thanksgiving, NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev arrived aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. The Cygnus spacecraft was temporarily moved to make room for their docking. On Monday morning, Cygnus was reattached to the ISS, and NASA astronauts Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman, and Williams began unpacking science experiments and supplies that arrived on September 18. Next week, Kim will depart the station with Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky aboard the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft to return to Earth.
