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LOS ANGELES – Two US astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and a United Arab Emirates astronaut have been safely on their solution to the Worldwide House Station (ISS) on Thursday, as their SpaceX ship neared a deliberate rendezvous with the orbiting laboratory, NASA mentioned.
The autonomously flying SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule was resulting from attain the area station and dock to the platform shortly after 1:15 a.m. EST (0615 GMT) on Friday, almost 25 hours after launching from NASA’s Kennedy House Middle in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Management over the areacraft can be handed off from SpaceX mission management close to Los Angeles to NASA’s Johnson House Middle in Houston as soon as the Crew Dragon is able to dock with the ISS.
The four-man crew is predicted to spend six months aboard the ISS conducting greater than 200 experiments and expertise demonstrations, starting from analysis on human cell development in area to controlling flamable supplies in microgravity.
A number of the analysis will assist pave the way in which for future long-duration human expeditions to the Moon and past beneath NASA’s Artemis program, its successor to Apollo, the US area company mentioned.
The mission, designated Crew 6, is the sixth long-duration ISS crew SpaceX has flown for NASA because the personal rocket enterprise based by billionaire Elon Musk started sending American astronauts to orbit in Could 2020. Musk is CEO of electrical automobile maker Tesla and social media platform Twitter.
SUBMARINER AND ENGINEERS
The most recent crew was led by Stephen Bowen, 59, a onetime U.S. Navy submarine officer who has logged greater than 40 days in orbit as a veteran of three House Shuttle flights and 7 areawalks. Fellow NASA astronaut Warren “Woody” Hoburg, 37, {an electrical} engineer, pc science knowledgeable and industrial aviator designated, was making his first areaflight.
The Crew 6 mission additionally was notable for its inclusion of UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, 41, solely the second individual from his nation to fly to area and the primary to launch from U.S. soil as a part of a long-duration area station crew.
Rounding out the four-man Crew 6 was Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, 42, who like Alneyadi is an engineer and areaflight rookie designated as a mission specialist for the crew.
Fedyaev is the second cosmonaut to fly aboard an American areacraft beneath a renewed ride-sharing deal signed in July by NASA and the Russian area company Roscosmos, regardless of heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Crew 6 crew can be welcomed aboard the area station by seven present ISS occupants – three NASA crew members, together with commander Nicole Aunapu Mann, the primary Native American lady to fly to area, together with three Russians and a Japanese astronaut.
These seven are anticipated to finish their mission and depart the area station this month. 4 will return within the SpaceX Dragon they rode to orbit in October, and three others will experience dwelling in a Russian Soyuz areacraft flown empty to the ISS final week to exchange one which sprang a coolant leak whereas docked to the station in December.
The Crew 6 launch got here 72 hours after an preliminary liftoff try was scrubbed within the closing minutes of countdown early on Monday resulting from an irregular movement of engine-ignition fluid. NASA mentioned the system labored completely after a clogged filter was changed and the traces purged.
The launch finally unfolded with hardly a hiccup. However a defective sensor was additionally detected on considered one of 36 switches related to a dozen grappling hooks used to latch the nostril of the crew capsule to the ISS, however there’s sufficient redundancy in that system that no issues with docking or closing the nostril cone are anticipated, NASA and SpaceX officers mentioned.
The launch and rendezvous fell precisely on the four-year anniversary of SpaceX‘s first uncrewed “Demo-1” check flight of a Dragon areacraft to the ISS and again in 2019. – Reuters
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