SpaceX capsule docks with International Space Station delivering crew of four

The latest crew rotation has successfully arrived at the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX capsule, carrying the four new team members, including a Russian cosmonaut and the first Native American woman in space.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft named Endurance docked at the station on Thursday, a day after it launched into orbit from Florida. The link occurred 260 miles over the Atlantic Ocean, just off the west coast of Africa.

It marked the first time in 20 years that a Russian lifted off NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the result of a new agreement reached despite tensions over the war in Ukraine and the unhinged threat of nuclear strikes from Russia.

Cosmonaut Anna Kikina joins two Russians already in orbit at the outpost. She will live and work on the Russian side until March, before returning to Earth in the same SpaceX capsule.

Also taking part in the mission are two NASA astronauts — flight commander Nicole Aunapu Mann, 45, and pilot Josh Cassada, 49 — as well as Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, 59, a veteran of four previous space flights.

Mann and her crew will replace three Americans and an Italian who will return there next week in their own SpaceX capsule after nearly six months. Until then, 11 people will share the track lab.

The team was led by Mann, a Wailacki member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in California and the first woman to take command of a SpaceX Crew Dragon.

Mann, a US Marine Corps colonel and fighter pilot, is also among the first group of 18 astronauts selected for NASA’s upcoming Artemis missions intended to return humans to the moon later this decade.

As the capsule approached, the space station residents promised the newcomers that their cages were ready and the outside lights were on.

Mann replied, “You are the best.”

“We’re looking forward to getting to work,” Mann reported on the radio just after the pairing was completed.

Upon arrival, the Endurance crew spent nearly two hours performing a series of standard procedures, such as leak checks and pressurizing the chamber between the capsule and the ISS, before opening the access hatches.

A live NASA video feed showed the smiling newcomers weightless head forward through the lined passageway one by one into the station.

They were greeted with hugs and handshakes by the four-person team they replaced — three Americans and Italian station commander, Samantha Cristoforetti — as well as two Russians and a fourth NASA astronaut who shared a Soyuz flight to the ISS last month.

“Many people are working hard to ensure that our common manned space exploration continues, to evolve. We are living proof of that,” Kikina said in Russian remarks that were translated into English by a mission-control interpreter during a short welcoming ceremony.

The Endurance crew marked the fifth full-fledged ISS team to fly NASA aboard a SpaceX capsule since the private rocket company founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent American astronauts to space in May 2020.

SpaceX has flown a total of eight manned missions, including non-NASA flights.

The newcomers will conduct more than 200 experiments during their 150-day mission, many of which will focus on medical research ranging from 3D ‘bioprinting’ human tissue to a study of bacteria grown in microgravity.

Stretching the length of a football field, ISS has been continuously occupied since 2000 and is operated by a US-Russia-led partnership that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.

The inclusion of Kikina, the lone female cosmonaut on active duty with the Russian space agency Roscosmos, was a sign of continued US-Russian cooperation in space, despite escalating tensions between Moscow and Washington.

Kikina joined the SpaceX Crew-5 flight under a new ride-sharing agreement signed between NASA and Roscosmos in July, allowing the two countries to continue flying each other’s spacecraft to and from the ISS.

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio arrived two weeks ago. He launched on a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan and initiated the cashless crew swap between NASA and the Russian space agency.

The deal ensures that there is always at least one Russian and one American on the station.

Until Elon Musk’s SpaceX began launching astronauts two years ago, NASA had to spend tens of millions of dollars every time an astronaut flew on a Soyuz after America’s spaceflight capability expired nearly a decade.

Ensuring the operation of the ISS has become one of the few remaining areas of cooperation between the United States and Russia.

At a post-launch briefing, Sergei Krikalev, head of Roscosmos’ manned space program, praised the occasion as the beginning of a “new phase of our cooperation,” evoking the historic Apollo-Soyuz mission of 1975, a symbol of relaxation on the height of the Cold War.

Krikalev, a former cosmonaut respected by his American colleagues, is engaged in a charm offensive of sorts after the last head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, threatened earlier this year to end the partnership and send the ISS crashing over US or European territory.

Although Russia has announced plans for its own station, analysts believe it will be difficult to build in the coming years, and that a withdrawal from the ISS would stand in the way of Moscow’s once-proud civilian space program.