Crew Of SpaceX's Crew Dragon Enter International Space Station - NASA

Crew of SpaceX's Crew Dragon Enter International Space Station - NASA

Four astronauts aboard the United States' Crew Dragon spaceship have stepped on board the International Space Station (ISS) for a six-month shift, with NASA live-streaming the transfer on Tuesday

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th November, 2020) Four astronauts aboard the United States' Crew Dragon spaceship have stepped on board the International Space Station (ISS) for a six-month shift, with NASA live-streaming the transfer on Tuesday.

"The crew members first opened the hatch between the space station and the pressurized mating adapter at 1:02 a.m. EST [06:02 GMT] then opened the hatch to Crew Dragon," NASA said in a press release.

The Crew Dragon team included US astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi. They were met by the current ISS crew � Expedition 64 � comprised of Commander Sergey Ryzhikov and Flight Engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, both Russian cosmonauts, and Flight Engineer Kate Rubins, who is a NASA astronaut. The extended 7-member mission will serve for half a year.

Crew Dragon, a NASA-contracted commercial spaceship developed by the SpaceX company, docked to the ISS at 04:01 GMT. It was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a Falcon 9 carrier rocket on Sunday, marking the US' first operational commercial crew mission to the ISS.

The Crew Dragon's test mission with a two-member crew took place in May. For the past nine years before that, the US had relied on Russian carriers Soyuz to deliver its astronauts to the space station.