FLORIDA: An international team of four astronauts aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule docked on Saturday with the orbiting International Space Station (ISS). "Docking confirmed!" SpaceX posted on social media, along with a video showing the spacecraft making contact with the ISS at 2:27 am Eastern Time (0627 GMT), far above the southeast Pacific Ocean.
American astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japan's Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov are joining the ISS on a six-month mission. They lifted off on Friday morning from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, their capsule mounted on a Falcon 9 rocket.
It is the 11th crew rotation mission to the ISS under Nasa's Commercial Crew Program, created to succeed the Space Shuttle era by partnering with private industry. As part of their stay, the Crew-11 astronauts will simulate Moon landing scenarios that could be encountered near the lunar South Pole under the US-led Artemis programme. Using handheld controllers and multiple display screens, they will test how shifts in gravity affect astronauts' ability to pilot spacecraft, including future lunar landers. — AFP
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