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November 18, 2020

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Hugs as Musk’s Dragon docks with space station

Source: Agencies | 00:15 UTC+8 November 18, 2020 | Print Edition

Four astronauts riding a newly designed spacecraft from Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX greeted their new crewmates aboard the International Space Station yesterday after successfully docking in a landmark achievement for private space travel.

In NASA’s first full-fledged mission ferrying a crew into orbit on a privately owned spacecraft, the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule dubbed Resilience opened its hatch door shortly after 1am Eastern American Time, two hours after docking and 27 hours after launching atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

“SpaceX, this is Resilience. Excellent job. Right down the center,” Crew Dragon commander Mike Hopkins said from the spacecraft after docking.

“SpaceX and NASA, congratulations, this is a new era of operational flights to the International Space Station from the Florida coast.”

A few minutes later, the crew of three Americans and one Japanese astronaut emerged from the capsule and boarded the station, greeting the existing crew of one US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts with hugs and high-fives.

The space station, an orbital laboratory about 400 kilometers above Earth, will be their home for the next six months.

Another set of astronauts on a Crew Dragon capsule will replace them. That rotation will continue until Boeing joins the program with its own spacecraft next year.

NASA had been reliant on Russia since 2011, when the US shuttle program ended.

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