SpaceX’s US Crew Dragon spacecraft with three astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut on board docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday.
The Dragon capsule, dubbed Endeavour, docked with the International Space Station (ISS) at 2:28 a.m. ET (0728 GMT) on Tuesday. At that time, Dragon and the station were hovering over the central North Atlantic east of New Foundland. The ground control radioed to the ISS shortly after docking:
Crew Dragon Endeavor welcome to the International Space Station. We would also like to note that you can’t be ‘crew late’ when you arrive 30 minutes early.
Crew-7 commander Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA radioed to Crew-8 from the ISS:
Dragon, from those of us onboard, welcome to the International Space Station, we disagree, you can still be crew late. Mike welcome back, we think a few things have changed since you left, Matt, Jeanette, Alexander you’re absolutely going to love it here.
Crew-8 sent NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeannette Epps and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin on a six-month stay in the orbiting laboratory.
The four-person Crew-8 launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday (March 3) at 10:53 p.m. ET (0353 GMT March 4).
Crew-8 is the eighth operational astronaut mission SpaceX has flown to the ISS on behalf of NASA.
The agency has struck a similar deal with aerospace giant Boeing, which is set to launch astronauts for the first time on its new Starliner capsule next month in a test mission called Crew Flight Test.
