SpaceX's Crew Dragon docks aboard ISS, NASA shares video of elated astronauts

A SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying four astronauts- docked with the International Space Station (ISS) early morning on April 24 ET, commencing the team’s six months stay in outer space. The team which lifted off a day before from Kennedy Launch Centre consists of two astronauts from NASA, Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, one from France, Thomas Pesquet along with one from Japan, Akihiko Hoshide. The whole NASA mission is dubbed Crew-2 and marks the third-ever crewed flight for Elon Musk's company.  

After spending nearly 24 hours on the soaring journey, the Crew Dragon spacecraft finally manoeuvred towards the ISS in the wee hours of Saturday. Following this, the Endeavor capsule, which carried the four astronauts slowly aligned itself with the station and moved in to dock directly with one of the space station’s ports. A video of the four space travellers entering the ISS as well as meeting and greeting astronauts already stationed there shared by NASA’s Twitter handle.

"Endeavour arriving!" Welcome to the Space Station, Crew-2!,” wrote NASA  sharing a video which shows the astronauts shaking hands, hugging aboard the ISS. Additionally, they also revealed that with the arrival of Crew-2, the number of humans aboard the orbiting laboratory totalled 11.

'Rock Paper Scissors' 

Earlier today,  the ISS posted a 23-second clip that showed the four astronauts playing Rock Paper Scissors to kill time before the lift-off. In the caption, the space station said that the team went through their steps ahead of the scheduled time and therefore to the extra time, they indulged themselves in the classic hand game.  “The crew is going through their steps ahead of schedule and are passing the extra time aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft with a couple of rounds of the game,” the wrote sharing the clip.

The whole mission dubbed Crew-2 marks the second operational mission under NASA's Commercial Crew Programme which was launched with an aim to end the US’ decade-long dependence on Russian rockets. The first mission flew in May 2020 and carried Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. The latest venture marked the Crew Dragon's second flight since last year when it had carried NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to and from the space station for the Demo-2 test flight. 

Image Credits: NASA/Twitter