CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE STATION — After a 34-hour commute from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the four members of the Crew-12 docked with the International Space Station on Valentine’s Day.
And they will spend the next eight months conducting various experiments.
What You Need To Know
- Crew-12 will be spending the next eight months conducting various experiments
Early Friday morning, NASA astronauts Cmdr. Jessica Meir and pilot Jack Hathaway, and mission specialists European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev took off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, according to both NASA and SpaceX.
Taking off from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, they left the little round Earth at 5:15 a.m. ET.
The quartet’s ride — SpaceX’s Dragon capsule called Freedom — docked with the International Space Station’s space-facing Harmony module at around 3:15 p.m. ET.
The Dragon docked autonomously, but if needed to, Hathaway could have docked it manually.
“The Crew-12 mission is the 20th human spaceflight mission that SpaceX has launched. Also, when the Dragon capsule docks with the International Space Station, it will be the 51st time a Dragon spacecraft has docked with ISS or has visited ISS, I should say,” explained Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX’s director of NASA Science and Dragon Programs, during the press conference after Friday’s launch.
Freedom has participated in four other crewed missions:
Crew-12 will be welcomed by NASA astronaut Christopher Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev.
Williams pressurized a small section where Crew-12 docked with the space station and leak checks were being conducted. Once that area was ready, then procedures took place for the Dragon crewmembers to board the station.
Before Crew-12 boarded the space station, Adenot requested a private medical conference call between the Dragon members and NASA. The U.S. space agency did not reveal the nature of the call.
They were to be greeted by Crew-11, but the mission was cut short after one of the crew members suffered a medical episode. The medical issue and the name of the person have not been disclosed.
The Crew-12 will join Expedition 74; an expedition is the current crew onboard the International Space Station.
During their eight-month stay, the Crew-12 will be conducting a variety of health-related experiments, as well as a study to simulate moon landings.
Anthony Leone
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