Four astronauts from four different nations and space agencies around the world launched on a SpaceX rocket toward the International Space Station to begin a mission that will last for more than six months.
On the Crew-7 mission, the crew is traveling in the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance capsule. At 3:27 in the morning, the spacecraft was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Saturday ET.
The mission’s four astronauts are Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency, Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov of Roscosmos, and NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli, who is serving as mission commander.
When the Crew Dragon spacecraft entered orbit, it disengaged from the Falcon 9 rocket and started traveling through space on its own. Over the course of more than 24 hours, the spacecraft will slowly approach the space station as it orbits the Earth at a distance of 420 kilometers (220 nautical miles).
After launch, Moghbeli sent a message to SpaceX mission control aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft, saying, “Space travel is hard, but you make it look easy.”
As a team, we all work toward the same objective. 7th crew, go. The crew is scheduled to dock with the space station at 8:39 in the morning. Moghbeli, Mogensen, Furukawa, and Borisov will board the spacecraft on Sunday ET and join the other seven astronauts in the orbiting laboratory.
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Crew Rotation Continues
The Crew-7 astronauts will take over for the SpaceX Crew-6 astronauts, who have been on board the space station since March, for about five days. This mission marks the eighth flight conducted by NASA and SpaceX as part of the agency’s commercial crew program, which got underway with SpaceX’s first crewed flight in 2020.
The astronauts on Crew-7 make up the most multicultural SpaceX crew to date.
At a press conference held soon after the crew arrived in Florida this past Sunday, Moghbeli said, “We are extremely proud—and I know I personally am humbled—to be a member of this incredible crew, where if you look at our four patches, you’ll see a different nation’s flag on each one.”
The flag patches that were sewn onto the astronauts’ jackets’ left shoulders were the focus of the mission commander’s comment.
The crew also worked together to create the International Space Station’s official mission patch, which features a picture of a dragon perched atop the Earth. We believe that this is truly what the International Space Station is about. We hope this serves as an example of what is possible when we collaborate and work as a team.
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Source: CNN
