Miami, Aug 27 (EFE).- Nasa and SpaceX’s Crew-7 manned mission arrived Sunday at the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Dragon Endurance spacecraft.
The four-member team, with representatives from four countries, joined the Expedition 69 crew after successfully docking at the ISS, as seen on a live feed.
“Docking confirmed for #Crew7! At 9:16 am ET (1316 UTC), the Dragon crew spacecraft with four space travelers aboard arrived at the @Space_Station,” Nasa said on X (formerly Twitter).
The docking maneuver was slow until the spacecraft found the correct position and linked up to the Harmony module.
The trip to the ISS took around 30 hours, Nasa said.
Approximately two hours after docking, once pressurization checks have taken place between the Dragon spacecraft and the ISS, the hatch will open and the new arrivals and Expedition 69 astronauts will meet.
The arrival of Crew-7 was streamed live on Nasa’s YouTube channel from the early hours and enthusiasts witnessed Dragon’s docking maneuver.
The Crew-7 mission, the seventh manned joint Nasa and SpaceX mission to the ISS, is commanded by astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, chosen by Nasa in 2017, and Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (ESA), who is the first Danish astronaut in history.
Astronauts Satoshi Furukawa, from Japan’s Jaxa agency, and Konstantin Borisov, from Russia’s Roscosmos, were also on the spacecraft.
Dragon blasted into space early on Saturday in what Nasa described as a “successful” lift-off from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
“Crew-7 is a shining example of the power of both American ingenuity and what we can accomplish when we work together,” Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson said.
Crew-7 will join the Expedition 69 ISS crew of Nasa astronauts Stephen Bowen, Woody Hoburg and Frank Rubio, as well as United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin and Andrey Fedyaev.
The number of crew members aboard the ISS will increase to 11 until the Crew-6 members (Bowen, Hoburg, Alneyadi and Fedyaev) return to Earth. EFE
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