SpaceX Dragon delivers Crew-11 to International Space Station
Aug. 2 (UPI) -- The four Crew-11 crew members joined seven other astronauts in the International Space Station early Saturday morning following a 15-hour journey from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, entered the ISS at 3:46 a.m. EDT, NASA said.
At 2:27 a.m., the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked at the ISS's Harmony module, and then the crew conducted standard leak checks and pressurization between the two spacecraft.
The docking occurred as the two spacecraft were 264 miles above the South Pacific Ocean.
"Endeavour, welcome to the International Space Station," NASA astronaut Jonny Kim said from inside the ISS. "Zena, Mike, Kimi and Oleg, we have cold drinks, hot food and hugs waiting. See you soon."
The six ISS crew members already on board are JAXA's Takuya Onishi, commander of the current Expedition 73 mission; Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers of NASA; and cosmonauts Kirill Peskov, Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky.
Crew-10 members Ayers, McClain, Onishi and Peskov, who have been on ISS since mid-March, will head home in a few days.
"Hello space station, Crew 11 is here!" Fincke, the Endeavour pilot, replied. "And we are super excited to join Expedition 73. We will do our best to also be good stewards of our beautiful ISS during our stay. The ISS has been inhabited and crewed for almost 25 years. We look forward to celebrating with you."
The docking was exactly five years after the splashdown of Space X's first crewed mission, the Demo-2 test flight, aboard the Endeavour. The spacecraft has been involved in six missions and is the most-flown of the Crew Dragon capsules.
On Friday, the Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 11:43 a.m. from Kennedy Space Center in Florida after being scrubbed on Thursday because of inclement weather.
It is the first spaceflight for Cardman and Platonov, the second for Yui and the fourth for Fincke.
Cardman and Plantonov were supposed to fly last year as part of Crew 9 on Sept. 8, 2024, but that Dragon capsule was used at the ISS by Boeing Starliner pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Their stay lasted nine months instead of one week because of problems with Starliner.
"This has been the absolute journey of a lifetime," Cardman said. "We are so incredibly grateful to be here. Thank you so much for this warm welcome. It was such an unbelievably beautiful sight to see the space station come into our view for the first time, especially with these wonderful crewmates."
SpaceX has flown 11 operational astronaut missions to the ISS. Also, SpaceX has eight other crewed missions -- Demo 2, four private efforts by Axiom Space and three free-flying ones to orbit.
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