SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft has successfully docked with the Harmony module of the American segment of the International Space Station (ISS). The docking, which took place in automatic mode, occurred at 23:15 Moscow time, NASA reports.
The Falcon 9 launch vehicle with the Crew Dragon spacecraft was launched on February 13 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, and the flight to orbit took about 34 hours. The Crew-12 mission includes Russian cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev, as well as NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, and a representative of the European Space Agency, Sophie Adenot.
For Fedyaev, this is the second flight on the Crew Dragon spacecraft: in 2023, he participated in the Crew-6 mission and worked on board the ISS for 186 days. His current assignment is under an agreement between Roscosmos and NASA on cross-flights - Russian cosmonauts fly on American ships, and US astronauts fly on Russian Soyuz MS spacecraft.
The Crew-12 crew replaced the previous expedition, Crew-11, which was completed ahead of schedule due to the illness of one of the participants. The new "replenishment" will spend about eight months on the orbital station and will be engaged in scientific experiments, maintenance of systems and preparation for the reception of the following crews.
Mission Commander Jessica Meir has previously spent more than 200 days in orbit and has made three spacewalks. Jack Hathaway and Sophie Adenot are making their first flight.
After the crew moved aboard the station, Andrei Fedyaev addressed the broadcast viewers with a greeting in Russian, noting that he was "glad to smell the ISS again, which cannot be confused with anything." The station commander, cosmonaut Sergei Kud-Sverchkov, recorded the approach of the ship to the station and published footage of the docking.