Latest 4-Person Astronaut Crew Welcome Aboard the International Space Station

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Four astronauts, three from NASA and one from the European Space Agency, arrived at the International Space Station on Thursday and docked their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule with the orbiting lab to begin a six-month science mission.

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The appointment came about 21 hours after the team and its capsule were launched onto a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Wednesday night, following a series of weather delays. they postponed takeoff for a week and a week. half.

The docking took place around 6:30 pm EST (2330 GMT) as the Crew Dragon vehicle, dubbed Endurance, and the space station flew about 260 miles (420 km) over the eastern Caribbean Sea, according to NASA.

The Endurance crew consists of three American NASA astronauts: Flight Commander Raja Chari, 44, Mission Pilot Tom Marshburn, 61, and Mission Specialist Kayla Barron, 34, as well as German astronaut Matthias Maurer, 51, a mission specialist with the European Space Agency. .

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Upon arrival, the crew took an inventory, performed a series of standard leak checks, and pressurized the space between the spacecraft in preparation for opening the space station hatch about two hours later.

Live NASA video from the station showed the newcomers floating head first, one at a time through a padded hallway from their capsule to the orbiting outpost, led by Barron and followed by Maurer, Marshburn and Chari, all wearing their blue astronaut jumpsuits.

They were greeted on board with hugs from the space station’s three current occupants: Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Oleg Novitskiy and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who shared a Soyuz flight with their Roscosmos crewmates to the complex.

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Among the newcomers are two members of NASA’s latest class of graduate astronauts who are also active duty military personnel: Chari, a US Air Force fighter jet and test pilot, and Barron. , a US Navy submarine officer and nuclear engineer.

Endeavor’s second-in-command is veteran astronaut Marshburn, a physician and former NASA flight surgeon who has recorded two previous space flights to the space station and four spacewalks.

Maurer, a materials science engineer, was making his spaceflight debut, as were Chari and Barron. In a brief ceremony after boarding, Marshburn attached astronaut wings to the necks of his three rookie colleagues amid handshakes and smiles.

Both Chari and Barron are also among the first group of 18 astronauts selected for NASA’s upcoming Artemis missions, which aim to return humans to the moon by the end of this decade, more than half a century after the Apollo lunar program ended. .

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The team of astronauts that arrived Thursday was officially designated “Crew 3,” the third full-fledged “operational” crew that NASA and SpaceX have flown to the space station together after a two-astronaut test in May 2020.

“Crew 2” returned safely to Earth from the space station on Monday with a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida that capped a record 199 days in orbit.

SpaceX, the rocket company formed in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk, founder of electric car maker Tesla Inc, has logged a total of 15 manned spaceflights in 17 months, including the September astro-touring launch of the first crew. fully civilian sent to Earth orbit without professional astronauts.

Spanning the size of a football field from end to end, the space station has been continuously occupied since November 2000, operated by an international association of five space agencies from 15 countries.

An international crew of at least seven people normally live and work aboard the platform as it travels at 5 miles (8 km) per second, orbiting Earth approximately every 90 minutes.