The SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavor docked with the International Space Station (ISS) early Saturday, a live stream showed.
LIVE FROM ORBIT: NASA @SpaceX Crew-2 astronauts arrive at the @Space station. https://t.co/2PsxR9gLoS
—NASA (@NASA) April 24, 2021
The soft capture – the first phase of the docking – occurred at 5:08 a.m. Eastern Time (0908 GMT), 264 miles (424 kilometers) above the southern Indian Ocean .
Dragon remains on track to autonomously dock with the @space station ~5:10 a.m. EDT pic.twitter.com/eyftZphCET
—SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 24, 2021
The hard capture, the second stage, occurred about 10 minutes later, when 12 hooks were securely attached between Endeavor and the ISS’s forward port.
“Difficult capture complete, welcome to Crew-2,” said US astronaut Shannon Walker, current ISS commander.
The fourth @SpaceX Crew 2 astronauts docked the #CrewDragon Endeavor at the station today at 5:08 a.m. ET one day after launch. #LaunchAmerica | https://t.co/gmlUpBr8TX pic.twitter.com/sHaDPJJZw1
— International Space Station (@Space_Station) April 24, 2021
“Thank you Shannon, we are delighted to be here, we will see you all in a few minutes,” replied the commander of Endeavour, American astronaut Shane Kimbrough.
The vestibule between the capsule is now pressurized so that the hatches of Endeavor and the space station can be opened.
The hatches are expected to be opened around 7:15 a.m. (11:15 a.m. GMT), followed by a welcoming ceremony at 7:45 a.m.
The Crew-2 mission, which includes the first European, Thomas Pesquet of France, took off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida before dawn on Friday.
Read also: SpaceX will take 4 astronauts to the International Space Station on Thursday
Endeavor carries the third crew sent to the ISS by SpaceX, as part of the company’s multi-billion dollar contract with NASA. This is also Endeavour’s second trip to the ISS.
He first flew there on the Demo-2 mission in May 2020, which ended nearly a decade of US reliance on Russia for trips to the ISS after the end of the space shuttle program.
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