SpaceX’s reusable Crew Dragon spacecraft, with American astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov as part of the crew, docked with the International Space Station on Monday Moscow time, NASA said.
Docking to the Harmony module of the American segment of the station was carried out automatically on Sunday at 17:32 US East Coast Time (Monday at 00:32 Moscow time).
The Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the Crew 9 mission, launched Friday from Space Force Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The Crew 9 mission has reduced the crew from four to two members to ensure the return to Earth of two astronauts from Boeing’s troubled Starliner test vehicle. Butch Wilmore AND Suni Williams.
During its approach to the ISS in early June, Starliner experienced problems with its maneuvering engines and a helium leak in its service module. On September 7, Moscow time, the unmanned ship undocked from the ISS and automatically landed in New Mexico.
The crew of the Crew-9 mission will remain in orbit for about five months, until February 2025. Along with Haig and Gorbunov, Wilmore and Williams, who were supposed to remain on the ISS for only eight days as part of the Starliner test flight, will return to the Land.
In July 2022, within the framework of the ISS program, Roscosmos and NASA signed an agreement on cross-flights of three Russian cosmonauts on the American manned spacecraft Crew Dragon and three American astronauts on the Russian manned spacecraft Soyuz MS in the period 2022-2024.
In December 2023, Roscosmos announced the extension of the agreement with NASA until 2025. As the executive director of the state corporation for manned programs clarified to Interfax Sergei KrikalevThe additional agreement involves two more crossover flights to the ISS until 2025.
