SpaceX Dragon delivers new crew to International Space Station
The International Space Station is once again fully staffed with the arrival of astronauts from NASA, the European Space Agency and Roscosmos on Saturday afternoon.
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Four astronauts docked at the International Space Station on Feb. 14. The crew will spend eight months aboard the ISS, replacing a team evacuated last month.
Feb. 15 (UPI) -- The International Space Station is once again fully staffed with the arrival of astronauts from NASA, the European Space Agency and Roscosmos on Saturday afternoon.
A SpaceX Dragon carried the four Crew-12 members docked to the Harmony module on the ISS at 3:15 p.m. EST and, after leak checks and pressurization between the craft and the station, the hatch was opened about two hours later.
NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev entered the ISS at 5:14 p.m. EST Saturday afternoon, joining NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev who are already about the orbiting outpost.
Crew-12 joins Expedition 74 aboard the International Space Station on Feb. 14, replacing Crew-11, which returned to Earth early in mid-January due to one of the astronauts having a medical emergency. (Photo Credit: NASA/X)
"We say welcome to Crew-12 today and we are happy they all arrived safe and sound, Kud-Sverchkov, ISS Expedition 74 commander, said during an arrival event after the hatch opening. "We have been waiting for this moment for a very long time. So we are very happy and proud to work as a team here."
Meir said she was excited to be back on ISS and that the crew is "excited to be here and get to work with Expedition 74."
Adenot, who is a first time crew member on the ISS, said that seeing the Earth was space was "mind-blowing," calling it "a very big moment."
Crew-12 launched from Kennedy Space Center's Space Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Feb. 13 for the 34 hour ride to reach ISS and bring the station back to full staffing levels.
Crew-11 returned to Earth early on Jan. 15 because of an undisclosed medical issue with one of the astronauts in the first-ever evacuation of a space crew from the ISS.
During Crew-12's eight-month-long mission on ISS, the crew will conduct studies on how penumonia-causing bacteria can lead to long-term heart damage, improve on-demand IV fluid generation to verify a system that uses potable water to make saline and will investigate automated plant health monitoring to help develop methods to grow food during space missions, according to NASA.
The crew also has several spacewalks planned during their mission, the agency said.
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