Doha: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft has pulled off a successful docking with the International Space Station (ISS), with a crew of four astronauts aboard on a mission expected to last about six months, NASA announced on Saturday.
According to Qatar News Agency, the docking occurred successfully after a swift 15-hour journey from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, at exactly 06:27 GMT, high above the southeastern Pacific Ocean.
The crew, American astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, departed Earth on Friday aboard the spacecraft mounted on a Falcon 9 rocket.
This mission, known as Crew-11, is the eleventh in the rotation series under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, aimed at replacing the space shuttle program through a partnership with the private sector.
During the mission, the crew will conduct experiments to measure the effects of gravity on astronauts’ ability to pilot spacecraft, in preparation for future missions including lu
nar landings.
The ISS, continuously inhabited since 2000, serves as an advanced orbital laboratory and a primary platform for space exploration research, especially for future missions to Mars.