The SpaceX Dragon, named Endeavour, with Crew-8 members docked to the International Space Station (ISS) complex after a 16-hour flight at 2:28 a.m. EST on Tuesday.
The Crew-8 members Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin will join the space station’s Expedition 70 crew of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Furukawa Satoshi, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Konstantin Borisov, Oleg Kononenko, and Nikolai Chub.
For a short span of time, the total number of crew members aboard the space station will rise to 11 until Crew-7 members Moghbeli, Mogensen, Satoshi, and Borisov return to the Earth.
On Sunday night, a SpaceX rocket lifted off from Florida arrying a crew of three U.S. astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut on their way to the International Space Station (ISS) to begin a six-month science mission in Earth orbit.
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The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket topped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule dubbed Endeavor was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, along Florida’s Atlantic coast, at 10:53 p.m. EST (0353 GMT Monday).
Following Dragon’s link up to the Harmony module, the astronauts aboard the Dragon and the space station will begin conducting standard leak checks and pressurization between the spacecraft in preparation for hatch opening.
Designated Crew-8, the mission marks the eighth long-duration ISS team that NASA has flown aboard a SpaceX launch vehicle since the private rocket venture founded in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk and headquartered near Los Angeles began sending US astronauts to orbit in May 2020.
The Crew-8 is expected to remain aboard the space station until the end of August, collectively performing about 250 experiments in the microgravity environment of the orbital platform.
The ISS, about the length of a football field and the largest human-made object in space, has been continuously operated by a US-Russian-led consortium that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.
(With inputs from agencies)
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Shambhu Kumar is a science communicator, making complex scientific topics accessible to all. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
