![]() So Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, launched an uncrewed replacement Soyuz last month to be their ride back to Earth. The trio's Soyuz sprang a coolant leak in mid-December, rendering it unfit to carry the spaceflyers home except in case of emergency. Also living on the orbiting lab at the moment are NASA's Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, who arrived in September aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. The Crew-5 astronauts aren't the only people welcoming the Crew-6 quartet aboard. ![]() ![]() UAE astronaut on SpaceX Crew-6 mission will spend Ramadan in space ![]() SpaceX's Dragon: First private spacecraft to reach the space station SpaceX launches Crew-6 astronaut mission to space station for NASA The Crew-5 quartet - NASA's Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, Koichi Wakata of Japan and cosmonaut Anna Kikina - are scheduled to return to Earth about five days from now. The docking drama came as a bit of a surprise: At a news conference about two hours after launch, Benji Reed, senior director of SpaceX's human spaceflight program, said that he didn't anticipate the hook sensor causing any more trouble going forward.Ĭrew-6 will overlap, albeit briefly, with another SpaceX mission in orbit - Crew-5, which arrived at the ISS in early October. The problem briefly stalled Endeavour's attempt to open its nose cone in Earth orbit, but this milestone was achieved after the capsule switched over to a backup system. That same faulty hook sensor also caused a minor problem shortly after the Crew-6 launch, which occurred at 12:34 a.m. Hurley and Behnken will now perform standard ISS crew activities, including conducting experiments and research, during the next several weeks, before they climb back into Crew Dragon for the final portion of Demo-2 - the trip back to Earth.The SpaceX Crew-6 Dragon capsule Endeavour is seen here shortly after docking with the International Space Station on March 3, 2023. The ISS hatch opened at 12:37 PM EDT, and the Dragon hatch opened at 1:02 PM EDT, at which point Behnken and Hurley were welcomed onboard the ISS by the existing crew, which includes two U.S. This mission is NASA and SpaceX’s Commercial Crew Demo-2, which is the second demonstration mission of the full flight and return of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, one of two vehicles commissioned by NASA from commercial partners to provide transportation services for astronauts to and from the Space Station.Ĭrossing this milestone means that essentially the first half of the mission has been completed successfully - so far, SpaceX has demonstrated that the launch process works as designed, as does manual control (the astronauts took over and ran two tests of that system) and automated docking. It was the second launch attempt for this mission, after weather caused a delay last Wednesday. Hurley and Behnken launched at 3:22 PM EDT (12:22 PM PDT) on Saturday, taking off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The updated cargo Dragon and Crew Dragon are designed to work with the new automated system. The spacecraft is able to dock with a newer automated international docking adapter installed on the ISS, unlike the original cargo version of Dragon, which required manual capture by the robotic Canadarm 2 controlled by astronauts on the station. The docking process was handled completely autonomously by Crew Dragon itself, which is designed by SpaceX to operate on autopilot from the moment of launch throughout the course of the entire mission. On board Crew Dragon were NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, the test pilots selected to be the first-ever humans to fly on board SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, and the first people ever to make the trip to orbit aboard a spacecraft built by a private company. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon “Endeavour” successfully docked with the International Space Station as planned on Sunday morning, marking another key milestone during this historic Commercial Crew demonstration mission it’s conducting with NASA.
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