CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. โ In a swift 15-hour journey, SpaceX successfully transported a new crew to the International Space Station on Saturday. This mission included astronauts from the United States, Russia, and Japan, marking another milestone in international cooperation in space exploration.
The crew of four, aboard the SpaceX capsule, launched from NASAโs Kennedy Space Center and successfully docked at the orbiting lab. Their mission is set for at least six months, during which they will replace colleagues who have been on the station since March. The returning crew is expected to begin their journey back to Earth as early as Wednesday, courtesy of SpaceX.
The new inhabitants of the space station are NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Kimiya Yui from Japan, and Russian astronaut Oleg Platonov. Each of these astronauts was originally part of other planned missions before joining this current flight. Upon docking, Fincke cheerfully radioed, โHello, space station!โ as the capsule floated high above the South Pacific.
Zena Cardman had previously been removed from a SpaceX flight last year to accommodate two of NASAโs stranded astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who extended their space station stint from the planned one week to over nine months. Fincke and Kimiya Yui were initially training for a separate upcoming Starliner mission. However, with Starliner grounded due to thruster and other issues until 2026, both astronauts transitioned to the SpaceX mission. Meanwhile, Platonov joined the mission after being sidelined from the Soyuz lineup due to an undisclosed health concern a couple of years back.
Their arrival pushes the temporary population of the space station to 11. Zena Cardman expressed awe after witnessing the station for the first time, describing it as an โunbelievably beautiful sightโ upon the crewโs arrival.
Although this flight was remarkably quick by U.S. mission standards, it still doesnโt break the speed record set by a Russian mission, which achieved a record flight time of just three hours.