A few hours ago, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft docked to the International Space Station’s Harmony module completing the first part of its Crew-1 or SpaceX Crew-1 mission that began last Sunday with its launch. After checking that the pressure is correctly balanced, the hatch was opened to allow Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins, and Soichi Noguchi to enter the Station.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft is equipped with an automated docking system to the International Docking Adapter (IDA). The approach to the Station follows a procedure in which safety is the top priority, so every little step of the Crew Dragon is checked up. Only if all goes well in the spacecraft’s position and speed they can proceed with the next step and in case of problems it can be aborted at each step. During the SpX-DM2 mission they successfully verified that this system worked correctly, but it’s always a sensitive procedure.

The journey of the Crew Dragon spacecraft wasn’t perfect. There was an anomaly in the primary heating system and the on-board computer switched to the backup system. The computer also disabled some systems used to warm up the Draco engines’ fuel. According to the first analysis of the problems, the values ​​of the parameters were too strict, so there were no real malfunctions and above all no risk for Resilience and its crew. They’re new systems and the software is still updated often, so it needs to be fine-tuned.

The new crew members will remain on the International Space Station until April 2021. Expedition 64 is now fully-crewed with 7 members instead of the 6 that normally make up the Station crew. It seems a secondary variation, but each additional person on the Station can conduct more experiments and various tasks exploiting more of the possibilities of a laboratory in microgravity.

The first part of the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft mission has been accomplished. This is another success for SpaceX, the first private company to begin the regular astronaut transport service to the International Space Station with their return to Earth. This is another historic moment, also thinking about Elon Musk’s space tourism projects.