ISS welcomes Crew – 11: SpaceX capsule successfully docks in orbit | WATCH

Kennedy Space Centre: An international crew of four astronauts successfully docked their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule with the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday, marking a significant milestone in space exploration. "Docking confirmed!" announced SpaceX on social media, sharing a video of the spacecraft connecting with the ISS at 2:27 am Eastern Time (11:57 am IST) over the southeast Pacific Ocean.

The new arrivals — American astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japan's Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov — are set to embark on a six-month mission aboard the orbiting laboratory. Their journey began on Friday morning with a lift-off from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, where their Crew Dragon capsule was launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket. This mission, designated Crew-11, represents the eleventh crew rotation to the ISS conducted under NASA's Commercial Crew Program, an initiative that partners with private industry to continue human spaceflight operations after the Space Shuttle era.

Upon their arrival, the existing ISS crew extended a warm welcome, as captured in the video: "We have cold drinks, hot food, and us waiting -- see you soon." Mike Fincke, the most experienced astronaut among the new crew on his fourth space flight, enthusiastically responded, "Hello Space Station -- Crew 11 is here and we are super excited to join."

During their six-month stay, the Crew-11 astronauts will play a crucial role in advancing the US-led Artemis program, which aims for future lunar missions. They will simulate Moon landing scenarios, specifically those anticipated near the lunar South Pole. Using handheld controllers and multiple display screens, they will assess how changes in gravity impact an astronaut's ability to pilot spacecraft, including next-generation lunar landers.

The ISS, continuously inhabited since 2000, serves as a vital testbed for scientific research that supports deeper space exploration, including eventual human missions to Mars. Among the more unusual items transported by Crew-11 are Armenian pomegranate seeds, which will be studied in microgravity and compared to a control group on Earth to understand their effects on crop growth.

Looking ahead, the ISS is scheduled for decommissioning after 2030. Its orbit will be gradually lowered until it eventually breaks up in the Earth's atmosphere over Point Nemo, a remote region of the Pacific Ocean designated as a spacecraft graveyard.

With inputs from AFP