NASA’s Crew-5 astronauts arrived at the ISS today, after a 29-hour trip from Earth following launch yesterday from Kennedy Space Center.
Their SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft “Endurance” conducted a picture-perfect autonomous rendezvous & approach, docking to the station’s Harmony module forward port at 5:01pm EDT, about 260 miles above the west coast of Africa. Hatch opening occurred at 6:49pm EDT over the southern Atlantic Ocean.
Crew-5 Replacing Crew-4 on ISS
NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) exited the Dragon to board station first. They were followed by Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and cosmonaut Anna Kikina. All were welcomed aboard with smiles and hugs by the space station’s Expedition 68 crew.
Crew-5 is replacing the current Crew-4 residents, who have been on station since last April. Crew-4 astronauts Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren, Jessica Watkins and Europe’s Samantha Cristoforetti will spend the next week helping Crew-5 get adjusted, before returning to Earth on their own Dragon “Freedom” which is docked next to Endurance.
Also onboard are NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, who recently launched on a Russian Soyuz.
Crew-5 settling for 6 months of work on ISS
11 souls are now living in space, until Crew-4 departs next week for a splashdown off the coast of Florida.
Over the next 6 months, Crew-5 will be busy conducting over 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations. They include studies on printing human organs in space and better understanding heart disease. You can read more about some of the work they’ll be doing HERE.
