Photo: Collected
SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying an international team of astronauts successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday (5 March), the ISS said.
On Sunday, the Falcon 9 booster carrying the Crew Dragon was launched from Florida. The launch was initially scheduled for February, but was put off several times. The previous attempt was canceled on Saturday over bad weather conditions.
"The SpaceX #Crew8 mission has arrived at the space station docking to the Harmony module at 2:28am ET [7:28 a.m. GMT] today. The NASA Commercial Crew foursome will enter the station in less than two hours," the ISS wrote on X.
The crew, which includes US astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, as well as Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, is expected to spend about six months in orbit.
The Russian cosmonaut is participating in the mission as part of an agreement sealed between Russian state space corporation Roscosmos and NASA. Under the deal, one US astronaut travels to the ISS with a Russian crew, and vice versa, one Russian cosmonaut travels to orbit with a US crew. The practice began in September 2022 and is valid through the end of 2025, with the possibility of further extension.
Messenger/Mumu
