TOKYO (dpa-AFX) - SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience with four astronauts aboard successfully docked to the International Space Station on late Monday night.
The hatch was opened about 1:10 a.m. EST on Tuesday, followed by a welcome ceremony at 1:40 a.m, in which NASA's Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Kathy Lueders and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency or JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa greeted the crew.
NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi have now started their six-month science mission on the station.
NASA's SpaceX Crew-1 mission, the first NASA-certified commercial human spacecraft system in history, was lifted off aboard Elon Musk's SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on November 15 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The Crew-1 astronauts joined Expedition 64 Flight Engineer Kate Rubins of NASA, and station Commander Sergey Ryzhikov and Flight Engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of Roscosmos, who arrived to the station October 14.
On November 19, the four astronauts and Rubins will participate in a news conference from the space station that will air live at 9:55 a.m. on NASA Television and the agency's website.
They will discuss about upcoming expedition, which increases the regular space station crew size from six to seven astronauts.
The mission is the first of six certified, crew missions NASA and SpaceX will fly as a part of the agency's Commercial Crew Program.
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