Four astronauts – three from NASA and one from the European Space Agency – have already arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) and docked their SpaceX capsule. All this happened two days after the last crew in orbit returned to Earth.
NASA commentators said on a radio broadcast that the Crew Dragon capsule’s encounter with the station less than 16 hours after launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, was one of SpaceX’s fastest flights to the International Space Station. Online. The fully automatic docking occurred at 23:37 (Lisbon time) while the Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed “Freedom,” and the space station were about 420 kilometers above the Pacific Ocean, according to NASA.
The Freedom crew consists of three NASA astronauts—flight leader Kjell Lindgren, 49; one pilot, Bob Hines, 47; and mission specialist Jessica Watkins, 33, and Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, 45, of the European Space Agency (ESA). After docking ahead of schedule, the crew members spent two hours conducting checks and pressurizing the chamber between the capsule and the International Space Station before opening the entry doors.
A NASA video showed the newly arrived smiling astronauts walking one by one to the space station. They were greeted with hugs and handshakes by the four members who would replace them – three Americans and one German from the European Space Agency. –, who will finish their assignment next week. The reception was not attended by three Russian cosmonauts who were also at the station and preparing for their spacewalk.
The four new astronauts – Crew 4 – are the fourth crew from the International Space Station to arrive there aboard SpaceX since the California-based company began transporting astronauts from the United States in 2020. SpaceX was founded in 2002 from Billionaire Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla who on Monday opened the way to acquiring the social network Twitter, accepted. In the past two years, it has launched seven human flights into space. Those trips include a flight organized by Houston-based company Axiom Space, which involved a crew that returned to Earth on Monday after a two-week stay aboard the International Space Station. This was the first fully private manned mission.
Aubrey Geminiani/NASA
Crew 4 was launched just 39 hours after Team Axiom “landed” safely in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida in the Crew Dragon capsule. The short period between the return of the Axiom and Crew 4 crews brilliantly demonstrated the speed of NASA and SpaceX, at least when weather conditions permit.
The lower deck of the Falcon 9 rocket carrying Crew 4 returned to Earth minutes after liftoff, making this fourth successful flight and recovering the same boosted SpaceX engine. The Crew Dragon Freedom capsule made its maiden flight.
Crew 4 piloted by Kjell Lindgren, a physician and astronaut who made his second flight to the International Space Station, where he stayed for 141 days and did two spacewalks in 2015. Mission pilot Bob Haynes, astronaut and pilot for the United States Air Force who amassed more than 3,500 flight hours in 50 types of vehicles.
Jessica Watkins is a geologist with a Ph.D. on landslides for Mars and Earth. She has now made her first spaceflight and has become the first African-American woman to undertake a long-term mission aboard the International Space Station. Samantha Cristoforetti, a European Space Agency astronaut and Italian Air Force pilot, makes her second flight to the space station and is expected to take command of International Space Station operations during the team’s six-month mission, becoming the first European woman in this role.
The International Space Station, the largest artificial object in space, has been occupied continuously since November 2000. An international crew of at least seven lives and works on the platform while traveling at a speed of eight kilometers per second. The station’s microgravity environment gives scientists a unique laboratory to experiment with everything from fluid mechanics and combustion to cell growth and aging.