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Four astronauts carried into orbit by a SpaceX Crew Dragon boarded the International Space Station on Tuesday, the first of what NASA hopes will be many routine missions that will end the U.S. dependence on Russian rockets.
The “Resilience” spacecraft docked autonomously with the space station about 260 miles above the state of Ohio in the US Midwest on Monday at 4:00 GMT, completing a 27.5-hour journey.
The three Americans of the crew – Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker – along with Japanese Soichi Noguchi, floated in zero gravity through a hatch and onto the ISS, where they were cheered and hugged by the three crew members of the station.
“Thank you for allowing me to greet you all,” said Kathy Leuders, head of NASA’s human spaceflight programs, in a video message broadcast to astronauts. “I just want to tell you how proud we are of you.”
Previously, mission commander Hopkins gave pilot Glover his “gold pin,” a NASA tradition when an astronaut first crosses the 100-kilometer Karman line that marks the official boundary of space.
Glover is the first black astronaut to make an extended stay on the ISS, while Noguchi is the first non-American to fly into orbit in a private spaceship.
The crew joins two Russians and one American aboard the station and will stay for six months.
SpaceX briefly broadcast live images from inside the capsule showing astronauts in their seats, something neither the Russians nor the Americans had done before.
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