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A SpaceX capsule carrying 4 astronauts — including the first Black woman to join the International Space Station crew — efficiently docked with the ISS Wednesday night, kicking off a five-month mission.
The astronauts had spent 16 hours orbiting aboard their SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft after a pre-sunrise launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:52 am ET. The capsule, which is absolutely autonomous, circled the Earth greater than ten occasions, maneuvering nearer to the ISS earlier than making a mild, exact contact with one of many space station’s docking ports at 7:37 pm ET.
This mission, known as Crew-4, marks a return to the crewed launches that SpaceX conducts in partnership with NASA after the corporate concluded the first all-private mission to the space station for rich paying prospects on Monday.
On board are NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines, and Jessica Watkins, and Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, who’s flying on behalf of the European Space Agency.
Here’s the whole lot you want to learn about Crew-4.
Jessica Watkins is the first Black woman to join the space station crew for an prolonged keep.
Though greater than a dozen Black Americans — together with 4 Black ladies — have traveled to space since Guion Bluford turned the first to achieve this in 1983, no Black woman has had the chance to stay and work in space for an prolonged interval, because the ISS has enabled greater than 200 astronauts to do since 2000.
“This is certainly an important milestone I think both for our [space] agency and for the country,” Watkins mentioned throughout a press convention final month. “I think it really is just a tribute to the legacy of the black women astronauts that have come before me as well as to the exciting future ahead.”
She has an extended historical past with NASA, having begun her profession there as an intern, and he or she beforehand held roles at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the place she labored with the Curiosity Mars rover. A skilled geologist, she’s studied the floor of the purple planet.
Watkins’ crew mates refer to her by the nickname “Watty.”
This mission’s crew is likely one of the first to embrace simply as many ladies as males.
Cristoforetti, who was on one earlier mission to the ISS in 2014-2015, is the only real woman in ESA’s astronaut corps. But Cristoforetti advised reporters final month that the scenario was “bound to end very soon.”
“We definitely expect to to have some some great female [ESA] colleagues by the end of the year,” she added.
Cristoforetti, a veteran of the Italian Air Force who’s earned her fighter pilot wings, joined ESA in 2009.
Hines is a 22-year veteran of the US Air Force, and this marks his first time to journey to space since he was chosen for the NASA astronaut corps in 2017.
Lindgren, the commander for this mission, is licensed in emergency drugs, and prior to being chosen to take to the skies himself, he used to work as a flight surgeon on the bottom at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, supporting different astronaut missions. Lindgren was born in Taiwan and spent a lot of his childhood in England earlier than shifting to the United States and attending the US Air Force Academy.
This group of 4 astronauts has spent months coaching collectively, and so they even took a while to do some extracurricular bonding. Watkins famous they went on a kayaking journey in Eastern Washington “just to get to spend some time getting to know each other and understanding how we all function…and what makes each of us tick, and I think that’s going to be really crucial.”
“We get along great. It is just such a joy to have these folks on this team,” Lindgren added.
The crew traveled aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which, since entering service in 2020, has now launched seven crewed missions.
Though SpaceX designed the Crew Dragon to be reusable and three capsules are already in service, Crew-Four is flying aboard a model new spacecraft, which they named “Freedom.”
The Crew Dragon was developed by SpaceX below a $2.6 billion contract with NASA as a part of the “Commercial Crew Program.” The thought behind this system was to transfer NASA right into a buyer function — permitting non-public firms to design, construct and take a look at a brand new spacecraft to serve NASA astronauts whereas nonetheless giving the corporate possession over the automobile.
Since SpaceX controls the automobile, it has the power to promote seats to whomever it needs, therefore the all-private mission that the corporate simply concluded and one earlier space tourism mission that took off in September final yr.
At NASA, this system has been deemed a hit, and the space company is adopting the identical contracting technique for a number of autos concerned in its efforts to explore the moon.
Now that they’ve arrived on the ISS, the crew will get caught up with the seven astronauts already aboard the ISS — together with three NASA astronauts and an ESA astronaut that had been a part of SpaceX’s Crew-3 mission, and three Russian cosmonauts.
There’ll be a few five-day handover interval, throughout which the Crew-Three astronauts will assist the Crew-Four astronauts settle in, earlier than Crew-Three returns house aboard their very own SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
Then the Crew-Four astronauts will set to work on all of the science experiments and space station upkeep duties they’ve on their to-do checklist.
“Experiments will include studies on the aging of immune systems, organic material concrete alternatives, and cardiorespiratory effects during and after long-duration exposure to microgravity,” in accordance to NASA. “These are just some of the more than 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations that will take place during their mission.”
Crew-Four is slated to return from space in September, shortly after SpaceX launches its Crew-5 mission.