SpaceX Launches Crew-7 to ISS, Sultan Al Neyadi Scheduled To Come Back to Earth Soon
SpaceX launched its latest crew of four astronauts to orbit early Saturday morning, sending them en route to the International Space Station for a six-month stay in space.
The crew, travelling inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, are slated to reach and dock with the ISS in the early morning hours on Sunday. NASA and SpaceX had originally hoped to launch Friday, but chose to call off the launch hours prior in order to take more time to analyse the Dragon’s life-support system.
Called Crew-7, this mission marks SpaceX’s seventh operational human spaceflight mission to the space station under NASA’s Commercial Crew Programme. It’s also the eleventh time SpaceX has launched humans to orbit.
It comes as Boeing — NASA’s other Commercial Crew provider — works to get its long-delayed Starliner spacecraft ready to fly next year. Delays have raised concerns about NASA’s goal of having multiple lifelines to the ISS.
Led by NASA astronaut and commander Jasmin Moghbeli, Saturday’s crew includes Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency, Satoshi Furukawa from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov.
The crew are slated to stay on board before returning in early 2024.
The four astronauts (NASA astronaut Stephen Bowen; UAE astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi; NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg; and Russian space agency (Roscosmos) cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev) of SpaceX’s Crew-6 mission, who have been living on the ISS since March, will spend the next week welcoming the Crew-7 astronauts to the station before returning to Earth in their own Crew Dragon capsule, tentatively scheduled for Sept. 1.
