Washington, Nov. 17, (dpa/GNA) – SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, which launched from US soil on Sunday carrying four astronauts and ending nine years of reliance on Russia to ferry astronauts into space, has docked with the International Space Station (ISS).
“The hatches between the Crew Dragon and the space station will open after the pressure has been equalized between both vehicles,” the US space agency NASA said in a statement
The spacecraft docked at 11:01 pm on Monday (0401 GMT Tuesday), just over 24 hours after taking off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
NASA hopes the launch will mark the beginning of many regular crew flights to the space station from the United States.
It comes after the historic launch to the ISS in May of astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley aboard a SpaceX CrewDragon spacecraft.
Their Demo-2 mission represented the first manned launch from US shores in nearly a decade and the first time a private firm, rather than a government space agency, sent people into orbit.
For SpaceX, a private commercial space flight company started by Elon Musk, the trip was the last major demonstration needed before NASA certified its spacecraft system for regular crew flights, also paving the way for possible tourist flights.
The Crew-1 mission became the first to use the certified SpaceX Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 rocket.
Aboard the spacecraft are NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, along with Soichi Noguchi from Japan’s JAXA space agency, beginning their six-month mission to and from the ISS.
GNA