SpaceX Crew Dragon carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station docked successfully at orbiting lab.
Hisana Thasneem
Visual from the Crew-2 Mission Launch | credits: SpaceX
It was for the first time a reused SpaceX Crew Dragon Capsule carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station as part of the company's Crew-2 Mission, docked successfully at the orbiting lab early Saturday on April 24.
Crew Dragon named as Endeavour, was the SpaceX's first crewed flight for NASA in May 2020, along with the Harmony module which was built by US. Both of them sailed 264 miles above the Indian Ocean.
Spacecraft was launched at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 23 from pad 039A. Although Crew Dragon Spacecraft already carried two NASA astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, to ISS as part of SpaceX's Demo-2 test flight. This was for the first time that a SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle was reused for a launch. This flight also marked as the first time that two Crew Dragon Vehicles are docked at the station at the same time.
Endeavour reached ISS on 25th April carrying four veteran space flyers from different space agencies including NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and astronaut Thomas Pesquet of European Space Agency (ESA). The four astronauts arrived at ISS almost 23 hours after their deployment. They had open the hatches between their Crew Dragon and station.
Astronauts
Megan McArthur | credits: SpaceX
Shane Kimbrough | credits: SpaceX
Akihiko Hoshide | credits: SpaceX
Thomas Pesquet | credits: SpaceX
After this successful docking, there will be 11 astronauts on the station, the seven-person crew of Expedition 65 flight of which four of them are from SpaceX who arrived in November and the new station residents of Endeavour. The station inhabitants also made arrangements for the new arrivals by building extra beds, making sure that the astronauts arriving at the station have a place to sleep. As per the reports only three to six astronauts can inhabit the ISS at a time, so the remaining inhabitants have to make shift crew quarters in order to support large group of residents.