SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour (upper left) approaches the ISS (right foreground) for docking
Photo by: Nasa
US space company SpaceX, founded and led by South African engineer and entrepreneur Elon Musk, has successfully executed its second operational crew delivery flight to the International Space Station (ISS), on behalf of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa). If the original crewed demonstration flight is included, this is the third time SpaceX has delivered astronauts safely to the ISS.
The mission saw a SpaceX Crew Dragon space capsule, named Endeavour, launched by one of the company’s own Falcon 9 rockets from Launch Complex 39A at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre in the US state of Florida. The launch took place on Friday, about noon South African time, and the Crew Dragon docked with the ISS just under 24 hours later.
This second operational mission under Nasa’s Commercial Crew Programme (CCP) carried four astronauts, only two of whom (Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur) were from Nasa. The other two were Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency.
As the four-strong crew of the first SpaceX CCP mission are still onboard the ISS, this means that the space station now has a crew of 11. It also means that two Crew Dragons are currently docked with the ISS. However, this situation is a very temporary one, as the four crew members of the first CCP mission will re-embark on their Crew Dragon (named Resilience) on Wednesday and return to Earth.