NASA and SpaceX’s Crew-7 mission arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) this Sunday aboard the Endurance Dragon spacecraft, to join the Expedition 69 crew stationed in the orbital lab.
The spacecraft carried an international crew of four representing four countries and autonomously docked at the space launch pad of the ISS Harmony module at 09:16 ET, according to a live broadcast.
“docking confirmed. The Dragon spacecraft with four space travelers on board has arrived at SpaceStation,” NASA wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
The docking maneuver proceeded slowly until the spacecraft found the correct position.
The journey to the orbital laboratory took about 30 hours, as confirmed by NASA. About two hours later, after the pressure has equalized between the Endurance spacecraft and the ISS, the hatch opens and the meeting takes place between the newcomers and the Expedition 69 astronauts.
Crew-7’s arrival was broadcast live on NASA’s YouTube channel from the early hours of the morning, and it was possible to observe how the Endurance base opened after the docking maneuver.
Crew-7 is the U.S. Space Administration’s seventh crewed mission to NASA and SpaceX’s ISS. She is led by astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, selected by NASA in 2017, and Andreas Mogensen, from the European Space Agency (ESA), who is the first Danish astronaut in history.
Astronauts Satoshi Furukawa, of the Japanese agency JAXA, and Konstantin Borisov, of the Russian Roscosmos also traveled.
The launch, described as “successful” by NASA, took place Saturday morning from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
In a statement Saturday, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that “Crew-7 is a shining example of the power of American ingenuity and what is possible when we work together.”
The crew of ISS Expedition 69 includes NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen, Woody Hoburg and Frank Rubio, as well as UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin and Andrey Fedyaev.
For a short period of time, NASA reports, the number of crew members aboard the ISS will increase to eleven until Crew-6 members return to Earth a few days later.
Source: DN
