HOUSTON—SpaceX’s NASA-contracted Crew-2 Dragon successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) early April 24, delivering a four-member, multinational crew for a six-month tour of duty.
The capsule carrying NASA’s Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, the spacecraft’s commander and pilot; Thomas Pesquet, of the European Space Agency (ESA), and Akihiko Hoshide, of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA,) docked autonomously to the forward port of the orbiting science laboratory’s U.S. segment Harmony module at 5:08 a.m. EDT, a little less than 24 hr. after their launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
All veteran astronauts, the newcomers were greeted by NASA’s Shannon Walker, the current Expedition 65 commander; Mark Vande Hei, Michael Hopkins, and Victor Glover, each also of NASA; JAXA’s Soichi Noguchi; and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov.
“Welcome to the ISS,” Walker radioed the Crew-2 Dragon astronauts. “We are so excited to have you aboard.”
“Great to be here,” Kimbrough said.
It took more than 2 1/2 hr. after the docking to establish power and communications connections and pressurize the volume between the two spacecraft prior to opening the hatches between the ISS and the Crew-2 Dragon.
After the hatches opened at 7:05 a.m. EDT, the astronauts from the two spacecraft eagerly embraced and shook hands.
The Crew 2 docking marked the next-to-last step in the near-month-long sequence of arrivals and departures of 14 astronauts and cosmonauts to ensure a continuous seven-person staffing of the ISS. The new crewmembers will oversee more than 250 science and technology investigations and activities and participate in upcoming rounds of spacewalks to upgrade the ISS U.S. segment’s near-360-ft.-long solar power truss with new Roll Out Solar Arrays and prepare the Russian segment for the arrival of the Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module.
In addition to the four astronauts, the Crew-2 Dragon also delivered about 500 lb. of cargo, including crew supplies, science experiments and spacewalk tools.
Also known as Endeavour, the spacecraft and its multinational crew lifted off on April 23 at 5:49 a.m. EDT, and settled into an initial elliptical orbit with an altitude of 131 by 119 mi. (210 by 190 km). Five major propulsive maneuvers followed to set up the docking with the ISS, which was orbiting about 264 mi. above Earth as they linked.
Endeavour previously flew the May 30-Aug. 2, 2020, SpaceX-Demo-2 test flight with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to certify the commercial capsule for the regularly scheduled transportation of astronauts to and from the orbiting science laboratory.
The April 24 Crew-2 docking also marked the first time two SpaceX Crew Dragon capsules have been docked to the ISS at the same time, though not for long.
Walker, Hopkins, Glover and Noguchi are scheduled to depart the ISS on April 28 at 7:05 a.m. EDT aboard their Crew-1 Dragon for a splashdown in the ocean waters off Florida’s coast at 12:40 p.m. EDT, ending a 164-day mission.
The Expedition 64/65 crew exchange began with the April 9 launch and docking of the Soyuz MS-18 with Vande Hei, Novitskiy and Dubrov. That was followed on April 16-17 by the departure and parachute-assisted descent of Russia’s Soyuz MS-17 into remote Kazakhstan with NASA’s Kate Rubins and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov to conclude a 185-day mission.
Related Content
