New crew arrives at space station after launch in Florida
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida. – The new crew arrived at the International Space Station on Friday for a six-month mission after overcoming a problem with one of the capsule’s docking hooks.
The SpaceX capsule and its four astronauts had to wait 20 meters from the orbiting lab as flight controllers in California struggled to come up with a software fix.
This is the same problem that arose shortly after Thursday’s launch. Although all 12 hooks on the capsule were in order, the switch of one of them failed. SpaceX Mission Control urged patience, telling astronauts from the US, Russia and Emerat they could stay in this waiting pattern for up to two hours.
Once the new software commands were handed over, the astronauts got the go-ahead to continue. In the end, the connection happened an hour later, when the capsule and space station took off 260 miles (420 kilometers) over the coast of Somalia.
“After a short scenic detour, welcome to the International Space Station,” Mission Control told SpaceX. NASA officials agreed that the delay added to the wait.
Among the new arrivals is Sultan Al Neyadi of the United Arab Emirates, the first astronaut from the Arab world to spend extended periods in space. Al Neyadi is only the second person from the UAE to go into orbit.
“I can’t be happier than seeing old friends in space, having a big family. This is the essence of space exploration,” said al-Neyadi, entering the station. “The UAE is taking a big step towards expanding the frontiers of intelligence.”
Also climbing in the capsule were Steven Bowen of NASA, a retired Navy submariner who made three space shuttle flights, and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, a space novice and former MIT fellow, and Andrey Fedyaev, a space novice retired from the Russian Air Force.
SpaceX launched four astronauts for NASA early Thursday morning from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Their flight was delayed by several days due to a clogged filter in the ignition fluid line.
The UAE sent its first astronaut Hazzaa al-Mansouri to the space station in 2019 aboard a Russian rocket. Decades have passed since the first Arab was launched in 1985 during the NASA shuttle era. The longest space flight of any of them lasted about a week.
UAE Space Official Hamad Al Mansouri called the station from Dubai to wish El Nayadi and his team a safe and successful mission and said it was a “huge milestone”.
The space station will be home to 11 people next week.
The newcomers will replace two NASA astronauts, a Japanese astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut, who have been on the station since October and will return in their own SpaceX capsule next week. Two other Russians and an American traveled to the station in September on a Russian Soyuz capsule that had to be replaced due to a leak, causing their mission to last up to a year.
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This story corrects a previous version that said UAE astronaut Hazzaa al-Mansouri called the space station. UAE Space Service spokesman Hamad al-Mansouri called.
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