SpaceX Crew Dragon to dock with space station, hold 4 crew members from 3 countries for 6 months

the next day release From the Kennedy Space Center, the Crew Dragon spacecraft docked at the International Space Station early Friday morning, bringing two NASA astronauts, a Russian astronaut and a United Arab Emirates astronaut to the outpost for six months. let me stay

Crew-6 Commander Stephen Bowen and pilot Woody Hoburg monitor a computer display, flanked by astronaut Andrey Fedyaev on the right and Sultan Alneyadi on the left, while Crew Dragon is in the space-facing port of the Forward Harmony Module. I activated the docking mechanism with 1. 40:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

While SpaceX engineers developed and tested a software patch to circumvent a sensor glitch in one of the 12 hooks needed to hold Crew Dragon in place, the docking was more than planned. I’m a little late.

Radio from Hawthorne, California, SpaceX Mission Control crew communicator David Huang said, “After a short scenic detour, welcome to the International Space Station.

“We’re happy to be here,” replied Bowen, a veteran of three space shuttle missions.

After some time, all 12 hooks were retracted as expected, the Crew Dragon was firmly in place, and a leak check was initiated to verify the hermetic structural seals.

About two hours after docking, the hatch opened and the crew finally flew into the space station, Crew 5 commanders Nicole Mann, Josh Kasada, Koichi Wakata, astronaut Anna Kikina, and the Soyuz MS-22/23 flight. I was greeted by Sergei Prokopiev, Sergeant.Dmitri Peterin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio

“Hello everyone. I’m very happy to be here with my friends,” Prokopyev said in English at a welcoming ceremony. “It’s great to see your smiling faces here, we look forward to working with you and congratulations to Steve, Sultan, Andrei and Woody on joining us. ”

He also congratulated Crew Dragon’s three new flyers.

“This is an important part of your life,” he said. “Andrei has become an astronaut, Woody and Sultan’s astronaut, which means they are now real astronauts! I wish you good health and happy flights here. Looking forward to working with you. I am doing it.”

Bowen said:

Crew-6 replaces Mann, Cassada, Wakata and Kikina, which launched to the station last October. They spent about five days getting their replacements accustomed to the station’s complex operations, then boarded their own Crew Dragon, undocked and returned to Earth around March 9 in her 154-day finish the mission.

During the final stages of the rendezvous, Casada radioed Crew 6 Dragon:

“I agree. I would be happy to send you home,” Bowen replied.

Prokopiev, Peterin, and Rubio were brought to the Institute last September and were originally scheduled to return home later this month.

But their Soyuz MS-22 ferry was crippled on December 14 when a presumed micrometeorite ruptured a cooling line.they ride now Alternate Soyuz return to earth. But to keep the crew rotation schedule in orbit, the trio will need to spend another six months in space, completing a year of orbital activity before returning home this fall.