SpaceX Dragon arrives at International Space Station
Miami, Mar 3 (EFE).- The sixth crewed NASA mission aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule arrived Friday at the International Space Station carrying four astronauts.
The capsule, named Endeavour, docked to the ISS at 1:40 am (06:40 GMT) as the station was over the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Somalia, following a minor delay due to a faulty sensor of the Dragon, NASA said.
“SpaceX developed a software override for the faulty sensor that allowed the docking process to successfully continue,” the United States space agency said.
At 3:45 am, the hatch opened and the Crew-6 team: NASA’s Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg; United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi; and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, boarded the ISS for a six-month stay.
The newcomers were welcomed by the Expedition 68 crew of NASA astronauts Frank Rubio, Nicole Mann, and Josh Cassada; Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin, and Anna Kikina.
The Expedition 68 contingent will depart the ISS next week aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule.
Endeavour lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:34 am (05:34 GMT) Thursday, three days after the original launch date.
The first attempt, on Monday, was called off less than three minutes before lift-off because of a problem with the ignition fluid in the Falcon 9 rocket.
Crew-6 will carry out more than 200 scientific experiments during their time on the ISS, including a spacewalk to collect samples from the station’s external vents to determine whether the ISS is emitting micro-organisms into space. EFE lce/dr
