A few hours ago, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft docked with the Harmony module of the International Space Station completing the first part of its Crew-5 or SpaceX Crew-5 mission that began with its launch about 29 hours earlier. After checking that the pressure was properly balanced, the hatch was opened to allow Koichi Wakata, Nicole Mann, Josh Cassada, and Anna Kikina to enter the Station.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft is equipped with an automated docking system to the International Docking Adapter (IDA). The approach procedure, with safety as the top priority, has been extensively tested during previous missions of the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The International Space Station’s position in its orbit counts a lot in calculating the time needed to reach it. A favorable position of the Station allowed the Ax-1 and Crew-4 missions to reduce the time to approximately 16 hours. In this case, the Endurance took a longer time because the Station’s position was not as favorable.
The Crew-5 mission’s crew met the Crew-4 mission’s crew, who are scheduled to be back on Earth on October 13. It’s not the first time that there’s traffic with spacecraft arriving and others leaving the Station in a short time. Next year, this could happen even more often with an increase in SpaceX commercial missions and the start of Boeing missions on the International Space Station and later on commercial space stations.
The Crew-5 mission will last until March 2023 as part of Expedition 69. Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, a super veteran who traveled on various spacecraft, was accompanied by three colleagues on their first space mission including the first Russian cosmonaut to fly on a Crew Dragon.
The Crew Dragon carries 4 people at a time while the Soyuz carries 3, so the Station crew has expanded. Greater possibilities for new astronauts also come from the fact that some veterans switched to the commercial sector, whose expansion in the coming years will depend not only on the missions in collaboration with NASA, which will also cover the use of the International Space Station but also on progress in the construction plans of commercial space stations.
