The SpaceX crew that can ferry two astronauts stranded on the Worldwide Area Station in February 2025, docked with the orbiting laboratory on Sunday, a reside stream of the mission confirmed.
The Falcon 9 rocket took off at 1:17 pm (1717 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday, with the Crew-9 mission aboard a Dragon spacecraft making contact with the ISS at 5:30 pm Sunday.
After docking was accomplished, an astronaut on the Nationwide Aeronautics and Area Administration, Nick Hague, and Russian cosmonaut, Alexander Gorbunov, boarded the station simply after 7 pm, embracing their floating colleagues.
“I simply wish to say welcome to our new compadres from Dragon Freedom,” mentioned station commander Suni Williams, one of many two stranded astronauts.
“Alex, welcome to the Worldwide Area Station, and Nick, welcome again house,” she mentioned.
When Hague and Gorbunov return from the area station in February, they are going to convey again area veterans Williams and Butch Wilmore, whose keep on the ISS was extended for months resulting from issues with their Boeing-designed Starliner spacecraft.
The newly-developed Starliner was making its first crewed flight when it delivered Wilmore and Williams to the ISS in June 2024.
They had been presupposed to be there for less than eight days, however after issues with the Starliner’s propulsion system emerged in the course of the flight there, NASA was compelled to weigh a radical change in plans.
After weeks of intensive exams on the Starliner’s reliability, the area company lastly determined to return it to Earth with out its crew and to convey the 2 stranded astronauts again house on SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission.
SpaceX, the personal firm based by billionaire Elon Musk, has been flying common missions each six months to permit the rotation of ISS crews.
Nevertheless, the launch of Crew-9 was postponed from mid-August to late September to provide NASA consultants extra time to judge the reliability of the Starliner and determine methods to proceed.
It was then delayed a number of extra days by the damaging passage of Hurricane Helene, a robust storm that roared into the other facet of Florida on Thursday.
Hague and Gorbunov will spend some 5 months on the ISS. Wilmore and Williams will spend eight months there.
Crew-9 will conduct some 200 scientific experiments throughout their keep.
AFP