The capsule carried three American and one Japanese astronaut to the space station.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts has successfully docked with the International Space Station overnight.
The four astronauts onboard – NASA’s Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, as well as Soichi Noguichi from Japan’s JAXA space agency – join NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and Russia’s Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, who are already at the space station after arriving in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft last month.
Glover, the first black astronaut to have an extended stay on the ISS and as a first timer into space, was presented with a gold pin by Mission Commander Hopkins on Monday.
The Dragon capsule arrived just after 11pm eastern time following a 27-hour, entirely automated flight from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The hatches are open and NASA's @SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts Shannon Walker, @Astro_Soichi, @AstroVicGlover, and @Astro_illini are the newest residents aboard the @Space_Station. Welcome aboard! pic.twitter.com/WYwC7jRVQk
— NASA (@NASA) November 17, 2020
Walker, Noguchi, Hopkins and Glover will spend about six months in space before returning to Earth in the same Crew Dragon they arrived.
The return trip will see the capsule re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and splash down off the coast of Florida.
The arrival of the capsule at the ISS today marks the first time Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, has delivered a crew for a full half year stay at the space station.
SpaceX and – eventually – Boeing will transport astronauts to and from the ISS as part of the Commercial Crew programme.
Under the Commercial Crew programme, NASA awarded SpaceX about $3.1 billion and Boeing about $4.8 billion over the past decade to develop spacecraft to replace the Space Shuttle which had become economically unviable.
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