NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, along with UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, successfully arrived at the International Space Station on Friday. T
he four astronauts traveled in the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour, which docked at the complex at 1:40 a.m. EST following their successful launch to the International Space Station at 12:34 a.m. EST Thursday.
The launch took place from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, while the space station was 260 statute miles over the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Somalia.
Although the docking was delayed slightly due to a faulty docking hook sensor on the Dragon, the mission teams completed troubleshooting and SpaceX developed a software override for the sensor. The docking process was able to continue successfully.
Once the Dragon was linked up to the Harmony module, the astronauts aboard the Dragon and the space station conducted standard leak checks and pressurization between the spacecraft in preparation for hatch opening, scheduled for 3:18 a.m.
Crew-6 will join the Expedition 68 crew of NASA astronauts Frank Rubio, Nicole Mann, and Josh Cassada, as well as Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin, and Anna Kikina. For a short time, the number of crew on the space station will increase to 11 people until Crew-5 departs.
