In accordance with the flight program of the Russian segment of the International Space Station, today, on July 26, 2021, the Progress MS-16 transport cargo vehicle with the Pirs docking module undocked from the ISS. Now the ship together with the module are in autonomous flight preparing to enter the Earth's atmosphere.

Upon completion of preparations for undocking at 10:53 UTC, the TsNIIMash Mission Control Center specialists (part of Roscosmos) issued a command to undock the spacecraft. According to the standard program, the Progress MS-16 cargo vehicle and the Pirs module departed from the nadir port of the Zvezda module of the ISS Russian segment at 10:55:33 UTC. After diverting the craft to a safe distance from the station, the Chief Operating Control Group specialists (RSC Energia, part of Roscosmos) began the controlled deorbit of the spacecraft and the module.

According to the calculations of the station's ballistic support service, the Progress MS-16 spacecraft engines will be switched on at 14:01 UTC for the prescribed braking impulse of 120 m/s, will send the spacecraft on to the descent trajectory. At 14:51 UTC, the non-combustible structural elements of the ship and the module are expected to drop in the calculated zone of the non-navigable region of the Pacific Ocean. The estimated drop zone is 3,630 km from the city of Wellington and 5,870 km from the city of Santiago.

Roscosmos has completed all the necessary procedures to establish this area as temporarily dangerous for navigation by sea and by air.

The Pirs module was used as a docking module for the Russian Soyuz crewed and Progress cargo spacecraft. In addition, until November 2020, cosmonauts performed spacewalks from Pirs under the Russian ISS program, while in November 2020 and June 2021, the Russian crewmembers used the neighboring Poisk module for these purposes. Pirs will be replaced by the Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module, which was successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on July 21, 2021 and is now on its way to the International Space Station.