Four astronauts are docked at the International Space Station by SpaceX just 15 hours after taking off
Four astronauts have been successfully delivered by SpaceX to the ISS within 15 hours of their launch.
Just fifteen hours after taking off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, SpaceX successfully transported four men to the ISS on Saturday.
Russia’s Oleg Platonov, Japan’s Kimiya Yui, and NASA’s Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke are among the arriving crew. They will take the place of a group of astronauts who have been on the station since March and stay on the orbiting laboratory for at least six months. As early as Wednesday, SpaceX is anticipated to return the departing crew to Earth.
“Space station, hello!” Shortly after the capsule docked high over the South Pacific, Fincke radioed.
At first, each of the new immigrants had been given a different mission. In order to accommodate NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, whose one-week stay onboard Boeing’s Starliner grew to more than nine months, Cardman was removed from a SpaceX voyage last year. Due to thruster and other technical problems, the Starliner program has been grounded and is not anticipated to fly again until 2026.
After the continuous delays, Yui and Fincke, who had been preparing for the upcoming Starliner flight, were transferred to SpaceX. Platonov was authorized to fly on this mission despite having been kicked off Russia’s Soyuz launch roster two years prior for an unknown sickness.
With their arrival, there are now eleven people living on board the space station. For their new coworkers, the welcoming crew had hot meals and cold drinks waiting.
Even though the 15-hour travel is quick by US standards, Russia still holds the record for the quickest trip to the ISS, having previously completed the trip in just three hours with its Soyuz spacecraft.
