The SpaceX Crew Dragon crew of four, which included a Russian cosmonaut and the first Native American ever transported into orbit, safely docked with the International Space Station on Thursday to start a five-month science mission.
Last Wednesday, a SpaceX “Falcon 9” rocket was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which flies autonomously into orbit.
Along with Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and astronaut Anna Kekina, the first Russian to join an American spacecraft in 20 years, the crew includes two NASA astronauts from the United States, Nicole Onapo Mann and Josh Kasada.
Despite the rising hostility between the two nations over the war in Ukraine, Kekina’s involvement is a sign of ongoing Russian-American cooperation in space.
Under a new ride-sharing agreement that NASA and Roscosmos reached in July, which permits the two nations to continue flying each other’s spacecraft to and from the International Space Station, Kikina joined the Space Crow 5 mission.
Sometime next week, the crew is most likely to fly back to Earth from the space station.
Over 200 experiments will be carried out by the newcomers during their 150-day mission, many of which are geared toward medical research and range from the 3D “bio-printing” of human tissue to the examination of germs grown in microgravity.
At the International Space Station, a SpaceX crew has arrived.
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