Crew-7 docks with space station

Crew-7 docks with space station

Time Stamp: August 27, 2023 10:38 AM
Source Node: 2238748

WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying four people representing four different space agencies docked with the International Space Station Aug. 27, almost 30 hours after its launch from Florida.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft Endurance docked with the zenith port of the station’s Harmony module at 9:16 a.m. Eastern. While the docking took place nearly 45 minutes later than previously announced, NASA reported no issues with the spacecraft’s approach or docking with the station.

Endurance launched Aug. 26 on the Crew-7 mission to the ISS, the seventh crew rotation mission by SpaceX under a commercial crew transportation contract with NASA. NASA’s original contract with SpaceX, awarded in 2014, included six operational missions but has since been extended twice and now covers 14 missions.

Crew-7 is commanded by NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, who is on her first flight to space. European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, who flew to the ISS on a Soyuz in 2015 for a 10-day mission, is the pilot. Satoshi Furukawa of the Japanese space agency JAXA and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov are mission specialists. Furukawa flew a long-duration mission to the ISS in 2011 while Borisov is on his first trip to space.

The four praised the performance of the Crew Dragon spacecraft in comments shortly after docking. “I have to keep reminding myself this is not just a dream,” Moghbeli said, thanking SpaceX teams for the training leading up to the launch.

“It was just like a training session in Hawthorne, California,” where SpaceX is headquartered, added Furukawa.

The four members of Crew-7 are slated to spend six months on the ISS. They will spend the next few days overlapping with their Crew-6 counterparts, who are wrapping up their own six-month stay on the ISS.

The four people of Crew-6 — NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — are scheduled to depart the station on the Crew Dragon spacecraft Endeavour no earlier than Sept. 1, depending on weather at splashdown sites off the Florida coast.

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