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By Reuters 
11 hours ago
Joey Roulette
Washington – Four astronauts aboard a newly designed spacecraft from Elon Musk’s SpaceX are docked with the International Space Station on Monday night, in the first manned mission on a privately built space capsule purchased by NASA.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, nicknamed Resilience by its crew of three Americans and a Japanese astronaut, docked at 11:01 pm EST (4:01 am GMT), 27 hours after launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The space station, an orbital laboratory about 400 km from Earth, will be their home for the next six months.
Later, another set of astronauts on a Crew Dragon capsule will replace them. That rotation will continue until Boeing joins the program with its own spacecraft at the end of next year.
The hatches are open and those of NASA @SpaceX Crew 1 astronauts Shannon Walker, @Astro_Soichi, @AstroVicGlover, is @Astro_illini are the last residents aboard the @ Space Station. Welcome on board! pic.twitter.com/WYwC7jRVQk
– NASA (@NASA) November 17, 2020
“All for one, crew-1 for all.” – @Astro_Soichi, from @SpaceX Crew Dragon after docking at @ Space Station. “Welcome to the ISS. We look forward to having you on board.” – Kate Rubins of @NASA_Astronauts. pic.twitter.com/tZJNtZZ92Y
– NASA (@NASA) November 17, 2020
The Resilience crew includes Dragon crew commander Mike Hopkins and two fellow NASA astronauts: mission pilot Victor Glover and physicist Shannon Walker. They are joined by Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who makes his third journey into space after previously flying the US shuttle in 2005 and Soyuz in 2009.
Another US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts are aboard the space station from a previous mission.
“Welcome to the ISS. We can’t wait to have you on board,” said Kate Rubins, a US astronaut already on the space station.
Prior to receiving flight certification from NASA last week, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon was in development for nearly a decade as part of a public-private NASA program launched in 2011 to revive the agency’s human spaceflight capability. .
In case of an emergency anywhere on the platform or during the ascent, Crew Dragon is able to transport the astronauts to safety pic.twitter.com/S8KQzwB0Z4
– SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 15, 2020
Sunday night’s launch marked SpaceX’s first operational mission for NASA under that program, following a test flight last summer with a crew of two US astronauts.
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