NEW YORK, November 17th. / TASS /. SpaceX USA’s Crew Dragon spacecraft with four astronauts on board was docked by the International Space Station, according to a live broadcast from the Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) website.
The docking of the spacecraft with ISS is done in an automated mode. In case of need, it is possible docking hand with the commander, as on the Russian Soyuz.
“The Crew Dragon” Resilience “went down at 11:01 pm ET.With hard capture confirmation completed at 11:13 pm, NASA’s @SpaceX Crew-1 astronaut spacecraft is officially connected to the @ Space_Station, “NASA said.
The team confirmed on their Twitter account that the effort was successful. Leakage investigations are currently underway. The docking came with a six-minute delay. This was needed to wait for the break of day and to see the orbital facility clearly.
The team called Resilience includes NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, as well as Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission expert Soichi Noguchi. Three astronauts have previous experience of space flight: the Japanese specialist went into space twice and the Americans once and for Glover this is the first flight to orbit.
The team will spend six months at the ISS. Currently, the ISS team includes Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov as well as NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins.
The launch was postponed between November 14 and November 15 due to bad weather. On Sunday, during the preparation of the discovery, SpaceX experts found a small air leak that had been removed by reopening and closing the lap and removing small debris from the seal.
The first Crew Dragon spacecraft mission was undertaken this year by astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken. The spacecraft entered Earth’s orbit on May 30 and entered the ISS automatically on May 31. Hurley and Behnken renamed Endeavor after their first space shuttle. The Dragon Crew was launched as the first flight in nine years from U.S. soil aboard the U.S. spacecraft. NASA suspended crew flights in 2011 after the Space Shuttle program ended. After that, all the astronauts were taken to the ISS and back by the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.