Image credit: SpaceX
SpaceX continues to make history with its Dragon capsule, as the latter successfully docked autonomously to the International Space Station at 5:08am EDT, on Saturday, April 24.
Dragon was launched into orbit on Friday morning by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster took a day to reach the ISS.
“This is the first human spaceflight mission to fly astronauts on a flight-proven Falcon 9 and Dragon. The Falcon 9 first stage supporting this mission previously launched the Crew-1 mission in November 2020, and the Dragon spacecraft previously flew Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to and from the International Space Station during SpaceX’s Demo-2 mission in 2020,” explained SpaceX.
NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet successfully greeted other members aboard the ISS, seen in a jubilant video shared by NASA this morning—showing a total of 11 board:
"Endeavour arriving!" Welcome to the @Space_Station, Crew-2!
Their arrival means there are now 11 humans aboard our orbiting laboratory, a number not seen since the space shuttle era. Hugs abound. pic.twitter.com/uSwW3JFl6K
— NASA (@NASA) April 24, 2021
This marks the first time two Crew Dragons are attached at the same time to the ISS. It’s also the third commercial launch by SpaceX to the ISS in one year.
Dragon and Crew-2 astronauts will stay aboard the ISS for six months, then return to earth no later than October 31, 2021.
Check out the full replay of the Crew-2 Mission to the ISS below:
Here is the Dragon docking replay:
