SpaceX’s recently dispatched capsule with four astronauts showed up Monday at the International Space Station, their new home until spring.
The Dragon case pulled up and docked late Monday night, following a 27-hour, totally robotized departure from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The linkup happened 262 miles above Idaho.
“Oh, what a good voice to hear,” space station space explorer Kate Rubins got down on when the Dragon’s authority, Mike Hopkins, first connected.
“We can’t wait to have you on board,” she added after the two spacecraft were latched together.
This is the second space explorer mission for SpaceX. However, it’s the first run through Elon Musk’s organization conveyed a group for a full half-year station remain. The two-pilot dry run not long ago endured two months.
The three Americans and one Japanese space explorer will stay at the circling lab until their substitutions show up on another Dragon in April. Thus it will go, with SpaceX — and at last Boeing — shipping space explorers to and from the station for NASA.
This ordinary taxi administration got in progress with Sunday night’s dispatch.
Hopkins and his group — Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi — join two Russians and one American who traveled to the space station a month ago from Kazakhstan. Glover is the main African-American to move in for a long stretch. A space newcomer, Glover was introduced his gold space explorer pin Monday.
The four named their container Resilience to give expectation and motivation during a particularly troublesome year for the entire world. They broadcast a visit through their container Monday, flaunting the touchscreen controls, stockpiling zones and their zero gravity marker: a little rich Baby Yoda.
Walker said it was somewhat more tight for them than for the two space explorers on the practice run.
“We sort of dance around each other to stay out of each other’s way,” she said.
For Sunday’s dispatch, NASA downplayed visitors due to Covid, and even Musk needed to remain away subsequent to tweeting that he “most likely” had a disease. He was supplanted in his official dispatch obligations by SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who guaranteed columnists he was still a lot of engaged with Sunday night’s activity, albeit distantly.
As they arranged for the space station linkup, the Dragon group radiated down live window perspectives on New Zealand and a splendid blue, cloud-streaked Pacific 250 miles underneath.
“Looks amazing,” Mission Control radioed from SpaceX central command in Hawthorne, California.
“It looks amazing from up here, too,” Hopkins replied.
