Latest astronaut crew of four welcomed aboard International Space
Station
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[November 12, 2021]
By Steve Gorman
(Reuters) - Four astronauts, three from
NASA and one from the European Space Agency, arrived at the
International Space Station on Thursday and docked their SpaceX Crew
Dragon capsule with the orbiting laboratory to begin a six-month science
mission.
The rendezvous came about 21 hours after the team and its capsule were
launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center
in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Wednesday night, following a string of
weather delays that postponed the liftoff for a week and a half.
The docking took place about 6:30 p.m. EST (2330 GMT) while the Crew
Dragon vehicle, dubbed Endurance, and the space station were flying
about 260 miles (420 km) above the eastern Caribbean Sea, according to
NASA.
The Endurance crew consists of three American NASA astronauts - flight
commander Raja Chari, 44, mission pilot Tom Marshburn, 61, and mission
specialist Kayla Barron, 34 - as well as German astronaut Matthias
Maurer, 51, a mission specialist from the European Space Agency.
On arrival, the crew took inventory, conducted standard leak checks and
pressurized the space between the spacecraft in preparation for opening
the hatch to the space station about two hours later.
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A live NASA video feed from the station showed the new arrivals floating
headfirst through a padded passageway from their capsule into the
orbiting outpost.
They were welcomed aboard with hugs from the three current space station
occupants - Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Oleg Novitskiy and NASA
astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who shared a Soyuz flight with his Roscosmos
crewmates to the complex.
ASTRONAUT WINGS
Endeavor's second-in-command, Marshburn - a medical doctor and former
NASA flight surgeon - has logged two previous spaceflights to the space
station and four spacewalks.
Maurer, a materials science engineer, was making his debut spaceflight,
as were Chari, a U.S. Air Force combat jet and test pilot, and Barron, a
U.S. Navy submarine officer and nuclear engineer. Shortly after coming
aboard, Marshburn pinned astronaut wings to the collars of his three
rookie colleagues amid handshakes and smiles.
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![](../images/111221PIX/news_k21.jpg)
European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer of Germany,
NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron wave
while departing the crew quarters for launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon
9 rocket on a mission to the International Space Station at the
Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., November 10,
2021. REUTERS/Joe Skipper
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Both Chari and Barron also are among the first group
of 18 astronauts selected for NASA's upcoming Artemis missions,
aimed at returning humans to the moon later this decade, over a half
century after the Apollo lunar program ended.
"I think we all loved the ride up here," Chari said during brief
remarks in a welcoming ceremony webcast from the station. "It was
way smoother than we could have imagined."
The SpaceX Dragon also delivered more than 4,000 pounds (1,800 kg)
of hardware and research equipment, NASA said.
The crew arriving on Thursday was officially designated "Crew 3" -
the third full-fledged "operational" crew that NASA and SpaceX have
flown together to the space station after a two-astronaut test run
in May 2020.
"Crew 2" returned safely to Earth from the space station on Monday
with a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida that capped a
record 199 days in orbit.
SpaceX, the rocket company formed in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk,
founder of electric car maker Tesla Inc, has logged a total of 15
human spaceflights in 17 months, including its astro-tourism launch
in September of the first all-civilian crew sent to Earth orbit
without professional astronauts.
The space station, spanning the size of an American football field
end to end, has been continuously occupied since November 2000,
operated by an international partnership of five space agencies from
15 countries.
An international crew of at least seven people typically lives and
works aboard the platform while traveling 5 miles (8 km) per second,
orbiting Earth about every 90 minutes.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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