NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, and Jessica Watkins, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti arrived at the International Space Station Wednesday, April 27, as the SpaceX Dragon Freedom docked to the complex at 7:37 p.m. EDT while the spacecraft were flying about 261 miles above the Pacific Ocean.
Following Crew Dragon’s link up to the Harmony module, the astronauts aboard Dragon and the space station will begin conducting standard leak checks and pressurization between the spacecraft in preparation for hatch opening.
Lindgren, Hines, Watkins, and Cristoforetti will join the Expedition 67 crew of Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, all of NASA, Matthias Maurer of ESA, and cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Sergey Korsakov, and Denis Matveev of Roscosmos. For a short time, the number of crew on the space station will increase to 11 people until NASA’s SpaceX Crew-3 departs in early May.
NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website are providing ongoing live coverage through hatch opening. NASA also will cover the ceremony to welcome the crew aboard the orbital outpost about 2:40 a.m. Thursday, April 28.
Follow along and get more information about the mission at: https://blogs.nasa.gov/crew-4/.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
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