NASA-SpaceX Crew-6 docks safely at ISS after hour-long delay

Washington, March 3,2023: NASA-SpaceX’s Crew-6 astronauts arrived safely at the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, after a 26-hour journey.

The SpaceX Dragon, named Endeavour, carrying NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, along with UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, docked at the complex at 1.40 a.m. EST (12.10 p.m. IST) on Friday.

“All aboard the orbiting laboratory! The four members of our @SpaceX #Crew6 mission have entered the @space_station and were greeted at their welcoming ceremony,” NASA wrote on Twitter.A

“Next: a safety briefing and orientation, then the new arrivals are off to catch some sleep,” the post added.

While the ISS had earlier tweeted saying that “the @SpaceX #Crew6 mission is ahead of schedule today”, they were delayed by an hour as mission teams completed troubleshooting a faulty docking hook sensor on Dragon. The crew were earlier scheduled to dock at 12.43 a.m. ET (11.13 a.m. IST).

The NASA and SpaceX teams verified that all of the docking hooks were in the proper configuration, and SpaceX developed a software override for the faulty sensor that allowed the docking process to successfully continue.

Crew-6 will join the Expedition 68 crew of NASA astronauts Frank Rubio, Nicole Mann, and Josh Cassada, as well as Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin, and Anna Kikina.

For a short time, the number of crew on the space station will increase to 11 people until Crew-5 departs.

The team is expected to perform more than 200 science, technology demonstrations, and maintenance activities aboard the microgravity laboratory.

The experiments include studies of how particular materials burn in microgravity, tissue chip research on heart, brain, and cartilage functions, and an investigation that will collect microbial samples from the outside of the space station.