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The SpaceX Dragon capsule, with four astronauts on board, arrived today at the International Space Station (ISS), announced the US aerospace agency NASA.
The first phase of the ISS docking concluded at 04:01 TMG (the same time in Lisbon), according to images broadcast live online by NASA. The second phase ended a few minutes later.
The capsule, called ‘Resilience’, was launched at 20:27 on Sunday (00:27 on Monday in Lisbon), from the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida (southeastern United States), by a Falcon 9 rocket from the company entrepreneur Elon Musk SpaceX, and NASA’s new means of space transportation, after nine years of dependence on Russia.
“It’s a great day for the United States and Japan,” NASA chief Jim Bridenstine said at a press conference, referring to the four astronauts aboard the capsule: three Americans, Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker. and a Japanese, Soichi Noguchi.
The four, who will join the two Russians and an American, will spend six months in the orbital laboratory, 400 kilometers above Earth.
This first “operational flight” follows the demonstration mission carried out between May and August and during which two American astronauts were transported to the ISS and back to Earth without any problems by SpaceX.
The SpaceX Dragon capsule is the second device currently capable of traveling to the ISS. The first is the Russian Soyuz, which has been carrying all the station’s inhabitants since 2011, after the end of the North American space shuttle program.
In all, SpaceX is expected to launch two more manned flights in 2021 for NASA, including one with European Thomas Pesquet, and four supply missions over the next 15 months.
“NASA was a disaster when we took it in hand. Now it is the most popular and most advanced space center in the world by far!” Outgoing US President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter, appropriating it. success of a program launched by the two predecessors.
President-elect Joe Biden also congratulated NASA and SpaceX. “This is proof of the power of science and what we can achieve by combining innovation, ingenuity and determination,” he also wrote on Twitter.
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