The space capsule Resilience has successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS), some 27 hours and 30 minutes after its launch from the US State of Florida. The spacecraft is executing the first ever regular, certified, commercial crewed flight, carrying four astronauts to the ISS.

The Resilience is a Crew Dragon spacecraft, developed, launched and operated by private-sector company SpaceX, on behalf of the US National Aeronautics and Space Agency (Nasa). SpaceX was founded and is led by South African-born engineer and entrepreneur Elon Musk.

During its flight, the Resilience was controlled from SpaceX’s own mission control centre in Hawthorne in the State of California. The mission was monitored by Nasa’s own mission control centre at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, in the State of Texas.

The mission was designated Crew-1, as the previous Crew Dragon flight, earlier this year, was a demonstration mission. That mission, which was flown by two astronauts, preceded and was an essential requirement for the certification of the space craft for regular operations. 

On this first regular mission the spacecraft carried three US and one Japanese astronauts, namely Michael Hopkins (Mission Commander), Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Soichi Noguchi. They have joined Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, and American astronaut Kate Rubins, who have been on the ISS since October (having flown up in a Roscosmos Soyuz spacecraft). 

“Congratulations, this is a new era of operational flights to the International Space Station from the Florida coast,” transmitted Hopkins, shortly after the spacecraft docked with the ISS. He and his crew will remain on the ISS for six months, with the Crew Dragon being docked at the station throughout that time. The four astronauts will then use it to return home, departing the ISS shortly after the Crew Dragon Crew-2 mission takes off, which will happen during the next northern hemisphere spring.