A new astronaut team was transported to the orbiting lab by a SpaceX Dragon spaceship on Sunday, August 27, to begin a six-month mission.
A new astronaut team was transported to the orbiting lab by a SpaceX Dragon spaceship on Sunday, August 27, to begin a six-month mission.
After performing a broad circle around the orbiting outpost, the Crew Dragon spacecraft Endurance arrived to the International Space Station (ISS) at 9:16 a.m. EDT (1313 GMT), where it positioned itself at a space-facing port on the American-built Harmony module. At the moment, Dragon and the station were traveling 261 miles over Australia.
“I truly appreciate it. After the successful docking, NASA’s Crew-7 commander Jasmin Moghbeli radioed SpaceX mission control. “I have to keep telling myself that this is not a dream,” said the speaker.
The four-person crew of the capsule arrived at their destination after a roughly 30-hour voyage that began in the early hours of Saturday from NASA’s Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But for Moghbeli and her three crewmates, it also marks the beginning of a longer expedition that will last six months.
Crew-7 pilot Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency radioed SpaceX, saying, “This is the first step of the journey, the real mission begins now.” We have a ton of work ahead of us on the International Space Station, but we look forward to it.”
The Crew-7 astronauts launched from their Dragon and docked with the ISS at 10:58 a.m. EDT (1458 GMT). The eight existing astronauts aboard the station were now joined by them. The 11 astronauts gathered after a brief welcome ceremony to begin their joint mission.
Moghbeli was transported to the multinational Space Station (ISS) by SpaceX’s Crew-7 mission for NASA with a crew that was genuinely multinational, including the mission experts Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Konstantin Borisov of the Russian Roscosmos agency. With personnel from four distinct agencies and nations, the quartet is the first all-international crew to board a Dragon spacecraft.
The mission marks SpaceX’s eighth operational crew flight for the American space agency overall (including a crewed test flight), and the company’s seventh for NASA.
SpaceX Dragon spaceship has completed its 11th crewed mission, including three private astronaut flights, and is one of two private companies with multibillion-dollar contracts to fly astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA.
In order to relieve four astronauts from their Crew-6 mission, which is scheduled to return to Earth on September 2, NASA’s Crew-7 astronauts will spend six months aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Moghbeli’s first space mission, the second Iranian-American to go in space, and Borisov’s maiden flight are all part of Crew-7. The Endurance capsule has already conducted NASA missions, and Morgensen is the first European to pilot SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.
A unique gift was prepared by NASA and SpaceX for Crew-7’s arrival at the ISS on Sunday.
Joel Montalbano, NASA’s space station program manager, told reporters following the launch, “We’re going to do a fly-around of the International Space Station and get some cool photos, and we’ll get those out to everybody to show what an awesome outpost we have.”
The Dragon Endurance capsule and the blue Earth were both beautifully captured by cameras aboard the space station during the fly-around.