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American astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi floated in zero gravity through the hatch inside the ISS, where they were greeted with shouts and hugs from the three crew members of the station.
“Thank you so much for letting me say hello to all of you,” NASA manned space flight program director Kathy Lauders told the astronauts in a video message. “I just want to tell you how proud we are of you,” he added.
The capsule, called “Resilience”, was launched by a Falcon 9 rocket from the private company SpaceX, NASA’s new means of space transport after nine years of dependence on Russia.
“It’s a big day for the United States and Japan,” NASA chief Jim Bridenstine said at a news conference.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket took off without error and at the scheduled time from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida (southeast). “It was an incredible launch,” said Captain Hopkins, once in orbit.
Less than three minutes after take-off, at an altitude of 90 km and while the rocket was traveling at 7,000 km / h, the first level of the spacecraft detached without incident to return to Earth, as it will be reused in a mission scheduled for 2021 which it will lead four astronauts to the same ISS.
Twelve minutes after take-off, at an altitude of 200 km and a speed of 27,000 km / h, the Dragon capsule detached from the second stage.
SpaceX confirmed that the capsule was in the correct orbit to reach the ISS just over 27 hours after takeoff.
The crew joined two Russians and one American on the ISS, where they will remain for six months.
This “operational” flight continues the successful demonstration mission carried out from May to August, in which two American astronauts were flown to the ISS and then safely brought to Earth by SpaceX.
SpaceX plans two more manned flights in 2021 for NASA and four missions to refuel the station over the next 15 months.
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