Crew-5 Astronaut Arriving On The ISS, Ready To Do More Than 200 Experiments

JAKARTA - Four members of the SpaceX Crew Dragon team managed to safely dock on the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday to start a five-month science mission.

The astronauts arrived at the orbiting laboratory following exactly 4 a.m. Indonesian time, after 29-hour flights to the ISS.

The self-flying Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed Endurance, slid into orbit on Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States (US).

The flight, carrying two NASA astronauts, namely flight commander Nicole Aunapu Mann (45) and pilot Josh Cassada (49) as well as Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata (59) a veteran of four previous space flights, and first cosmonaut Anna Kikina (38) from Russia boarded a US-made spacecraft in 20 years.

"We're looking forward to starting work," Mann said.

Upon arrival, the crew will prepare to carry out a series of standard leak checks and put pressure on the alley between the capsule and the ISS before they can open the hatch to the space station.

Crew-5 was greeted by seven former ISS residents, namely Crew-4 consisting of three US people and an Italian astronaut as well as two Russians and a NASA astronaut who flew with them to orbit on the Soyuz flight last month.

Launching Reuters, Friday, October 7, they will conduct more than 200 experiments over 150 days, many focused on medical research ranging from 3-D bio-printing human tissue to study-cultural bacteria in microgravity.

For information, the ISS stretches throughout the football field, and has been occupied since 2000, operated by a US-Russian-led partnership that includes Canada, Japan, and 11 European countries.