SpaceX capsule docks at space station carrying 4 astronauts from 4 countries
CTV
Astronauts aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule docked Sunday at the International Space Station, concluding a one-day trip to rendezvous with the orbiting laboratory after launching from Florida.
Astronauts aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule docked Sunday at the International Space Station, concluding a one-day trip to rendezvous with the orbiting laboratory after launching from Florida.
The capsule made first contact with the space station at 9:16 a.m. ET Sunday and its hatches opened at 10:58 a.m. ET.
Hailing from four countries — making this mission, called Crew-7, the most nationally diverse SpaceX mission to date — the astronauts include NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli, the mission commander; Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency; Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA; and Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov of Roscosmos.
The four launched aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:27 a.m. ET Saturday, and they’ve spent the last day free-flying aboard the 13-foot-wide capsule as it slowly maneuvered toward the space station.
Moghbeli, Mogensen, Furukawa and Borisov are joining the seven astronauts already on the orbiting laboratory.
The Crew-7 astronauts will spend about five days taking over operations from the SpaceX Crew-6 astronauts, who have been on the space station since March.
The new team will then bid farewell to the SpaceX Crew-6 astronauts, who will return home aboard their spacecraft, the Crew Dragon Endeavour, in the coming days.
