SpaceX Crew-7 Dragon Capsule Set to Dock with ISS, Carrying Four Astronauts

You can witness the entire event live online for free through a livestream as the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying four astronauts docks with the International Space Station early on Sunday (August 27).

At 8:39 a.m. EDT (12:39 GMT), the Crew Dragon capsule Endurance is expected to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS). There, it will dock with a space-facing port on the station’s American-made Harmony module.

The four-person crew of the capsule will arrive at their destination after a nearly 30-hour voyage that began in the early hours of Saturday from NASA’s Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Starting at 6:45 a.m. EDT, NASA TV and SpaceX will stream the docking live online (1045 GMT). When it starts, it will show up in the window above, or you may view it directly on NASA TV.

Moghbeli is being transported to the ISS by SpaceX’s Crew-7 mission for NASA with a genuinely multinational crew that includes the pilot Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency, Konstantin Borisov of Russia’s Roscosmos agency, and Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

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First All-International Crew

With personnel from four distinct agencies and nations, the quartet is the first all-international crew to board a Dragon spacecraft.

The mission marks SpaceX’s eighth operational commercial crew trip overall for the American space agency and its seventh for NASA (including a crewed test flight). If you count three previous private astronaut missions, this is SpaceX’s eleventh crewed mission.

The four astronauts of NASA’s Crew-6 mission, who are scheduled to return soon after Moghbeli and her crew arrive, will be replaced by the six-month space station expedition crew of Crew-7.

Moghbeli, a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps flew in space for the first time on Crew-7, becoming the second Iranian-American to do so.

Also making his debut flight is Borisov. Morgensen is the first European to ever fly a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, despite the fact that Furukawa and Morgensen had both traveled to the ISS before. In addition, SpaceX’s Endurance spacecraft has flown NASA’s Crew-3 and Crew-5 astronaut trips to the station.

When Crew-7 touches down at the ISS on Sunday, NASA and SpaceX have a special surprise in store.

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Source: MSN