SpaceX capsule with 4 astronauts reaches space station

SpaceX capsule with 4 astronauts reaches space station

SpaceX capsule with 4 astronauts reaches space station

9 hours ago

The crew of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket departs from the launch pad at Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Reuters

Gulf Today Report

The SpaceX Crew Dragon carrying four astronauts docked with the International Space Station on Monday, the first of what NASA hopes will be many routine missions ending US reliance on Russian rockets.

Four astronauts rode a newly designed spacecraft from Elon Musk's SpaceX in the first crewed mission on a privately built space capsule purchased by NASA.

NASA and SpaceX launch the first operational commercial crew mission at at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

"Dragon SpaceX, soft capture confirmed," said an announcer as the capsule completed its 27.5-hour journey at 11:01 pm (0401 GMT Tuesday), with the second part of the procedure, "hard capture," occurring a few minutes later.

The space station, an orbital laboratory about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth, will be their home for the next six months. After that, another set of astronauts on a Crew Dragon capsule will replace them. That rotation will continue until Boeing joins the programme with its own spacecraft late next year.

The spacecraft, named "Resilience," docked autonomously with the space station some 260 miles (400