The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule arrives safely at the International Space Station (ISS). It was launched into space early Friday after a brief delay. Inside the capsule were two American astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and a United Arab Emirates astronaut. The crew is on board for a six-month science mission.
The autonomous spacecraft docked with the morning station at 1:40 a.m. EST (0640 GMT) Friday, 25 hours after liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The pairing was confirmed when the ISS and capsule flew at 17,500 miles per hour (28,164 km/h) 250 miles (420 km) above Earth over the coast of East Africa, according to a Rendezvous live broadcast on NASA’s website. As Crew Dragon made its final approach to the station, the docking wheels fell off later than planned.
SpaceX ground control teams paused the capsule 65 feet (20 meters) from the ISS for 23 minutes to ensure that the 12 hooks used to secure the capsule to the docking port were properly deployed. The issue was finally resolved after a software override was enabled by ground teams. Upon arrival, the crew proceeded to perform a routine inspection and pressurize the passageway between the capsule and the ISS before opening to the station’s interior. This process is expected to take about two hours.
Science mission
The four-member team faces a busy workload of more than 200 experiments and technology demonstrations, ranging from studies of human cells in space to manipulating flammable materials in microgravity. Some of the research paves the way for future long-duration human trips to the moon and beyond, according to NASA’s Artemis program, the manned successor to Apollo.
The ISS crew is responsible for conducting maintenance and repairs on the station and preparing for the arrival and departure of other astronauts and cargo. The mission is the sixth long-duration ISS crew that SpaceX has flown for NASA since the private rocket venture founded by billionaire Elon Musk began sending American astronauts into orbit in May 2020. Social media platform Twitter. The latest crew is headed by Stephen Bowen, 59, a one-time U.S. Navy submarine officer who logged more than 40 days as a veteran of three space shuttle flights and seven space missions. Named after 37-year-old NASA astronaut Warren “Woody” Hoberg, an electrical engineer, computer science expert and commercial aviator, he was making his first space flight.
