Elon Musk’s SpaceX Dragon arrives at the International Space Station with American, Danish, Russian and Japanese astronauts on board
- NASA’s most diverse crew ever reaches the International Space Station after a 30-hour flight
- Japanese, American, Danish and Russian astronauts unnerved dock at 28,000 km/h
- The flight marks eight successful crewed missions for Elon Musk’s SpaceX
You don’t want to make a mistake when you’re moving at 17,000 miles per hour and the astronauts aboard Elon Musk’s SpaceX Dragon were calm as they docked at the International Space Station (ISS).
Thirty hours after launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the multinational crew overtook its target 420 kilometers above Queensland, Australia.
On board are a Dane, an American, a Russian and a Japanese astronaut on a six-month mission to study the effects of space on microbial life and on human sleep patterns.
They join another seven astronauts already on board, including American Woody Hoburg who had some advice for his new guests.
“They’re going to be very focused on their launch, their rendezvous, their docking,” he said of his new crew members from orbit on Wednesday.
The crew of four makes final preparations for docking in the cockpit of their SpaceX Dragon capsule
Astronauts on the space station captured their colleagues approaching from below
“And once they get here, the timetables change completely.
“We all feel like we want to go 100 miles an hour and use our training right away and be really effective. But there’s still a long way to go.’
“So hopefully they’ll have some time to just relax, enjoy and enjoy life and work here aboard the space station.”
The arrival of Crew 7 marks the eighth manned mission Musk’s company has flown for NASA since 2020 and was shown live by the space agency.
On board is US Navy test pilot Jasmin Moghbeli, 40, whose parents fled Iran during the 1979 revolution.
Born in Germany and raised on New York’s Long Island, she joined the Marines and flew attack helicopters in Afghanistan.
Next to her is Dane Andreas Mogensen, who started his career on oil rigs in West Africa before joining the European Space Agency.
The most internationally diverse crew in NASA history is joined by Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa and Konstantin Borisov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos on its first mission to space.
Everyone on the crew is from a different country for the first time in NASA history (left to right) Russian Konstantin Borisov, Danish Andreas Mogensen, American Jasmin Moghbeli and Japanese Satoshi Furukawa
Crew 7 smiled for the cameras ahead of Saturday’s launch
Astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli described launch aboard Falcon 9 as an ‘amazing ride’
The launch went off without a hitch at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida
The crew wore a three-toed sloth as their mascot as they went into space. Mogensen’s children claim that he is usually the slowest in the family when he leaves the house.
Their launch with a Falcon 9 rocket was described as “amazing” by Moghbeli, who hopes to show Iranian girls that they too can aim high.
“Believing in yourself is a very powerful thing,” she said before the flight.
“This is something I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember,” she explained during a media call last month.
“One of the things I’m most excited about is looking back at our beautiful planet.
“Everyone I’ve talked to who’s flown has said it was a life-changing perspective — and floating around in space sounds like a lot of fun, too.”
Four astronauts already on the space station will return to Earth in a few days, but not NASA’s Frank Rubio, who will break the US space endurance record by 371 days by the time he lands in Kazakhstan on Sept. 27.
He was supposed to return in March, but a coolant leak in the Soyuz capsule that was supposed to take him put an end to the plan.