(Washington) A SpaceX capsule carrying four astronauts docked Thursday evening at the International Space Station, where this new crew, Crew-3, will carry out a six-month mission in orbit.
The four men, three Americans and a German, replace Crew-2 which left the ISS on Monday, which included the Frenchman Thomas Pesquet.
NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Kayla Barron and Tom Marshburn, as well as European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer were launched from Florida by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday evening a takeoff several times postponed, especially because of the weather.
For the American Tom Marshburn, this is the third sojourn in space. He already flew aboard a space shuttle in 2009, then a Soyuz rocket in 2012-2013.
The other three astronauts, including the head of the mission Raja Chari, on the other hand made the trip for the first time.
PHOTO NASA / FRANCE-PRESS AGENCY
Crew-3 astronauts meet those who were already in the International Space Station
Matthias Maurer is the twelfth German to end up in orbit.
They were greeted by American Mark Vande Hei, who celebrated his birthday on Wednesday, alone in the US segment of the station. Two Russian cosmonauts are also on board.
The mission is called Crew-3 because it is the third operational to the ISS provided by SpaceX on behalf of NASA.
But this is actually the fifth time that Elon Musk’s company has launched humans into orbit: before Crew-1 and Crew-2, a test mission (Demo-2) had sent two astronauts to the ISS. . And in September, SpaceX also launched four tourists for three days in space, independently of NASA.
The mission will include many experiences. One is to grow plants in space without soil or other growing medium, and another is to build microgravity optical fibers that could be of higher quality than those made on earth.
Crew-3 astronauts will also carry out spacewalks, in particular to continue installing new solar panels on the ISS.
Finally, they will host two tourist missions: Japanese people brought by a Russian Soyuz spacecraft at the end of the year, then in February 2022 passengers from the Ax-1 mission, organized by the company Axiom Space in partnership with SpaceX.