CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A brand new crew arrived at the Worldwide Space Station on Friday for a six-month mission, after overcoming bother with one of many capsule’s docking hooks.
The SpaceX capsule and its 4 astronauts needed to wait 65 toes (20 meters) from the orbiting lab, as flight controllers in California scrambled to provide you with a software program repair.
It is the identical downside that cropped up shortly after Thursday’s liftoff. Though all 12 hooks on the capsule gave the impression to be nice, the change for one in every of them malfunctioned. SpaceX Mission Management urged endurance, telling the astronauts they might keep on this holding sample for as much as two hours.
“Groups are working to get this proper, not simply quick,” Mission Management radioed.
Minutes later, new software program instructions had been relayed, and the astronauts acquired the go-ahead to proceed with the ultimate strategy and docking. Ultimately, the linkup occurred an hour late because the capsule and space station soared 260 miles (420 kilometers) above the coast of Somalia.
It was anticipated to take an hour earlier than the hatches might be open, the usual time for correct pressurization.
“Now let’s work towards getting this hatch open so you may go hug your crewmates,” NASA Mission Management mentioned from Houston.
The brand new arrivals embody United Arab Emirates’ Sultan al-Neyadi, the primary astronaut from the Arab world who will spend an prolonged time in space. Al-Neyadi is barely the second particular person from the UAE to rocket into orbit.
Additionally flying up within the capsule: NASA’s Stephen Bowen, a retired Navy submariner who made three space shuttle flights, and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, a space beginner and former analysis scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Know-how, and Andrei Fedyaev, a space rookie who’s retired from the Russian Air Pressure.
SpaceX launched the four astronauts for NASA early Thursday from the Kennedy Space Middle in Florida. Their flight was delayed a few days by a clogged filter in an ignition fluid line.
The UAE despatched its first astronaut, Hazza al-Mansoori, to the space station in 2019 aboard a Russian rocket. It had been many years because the first Arab launched in 1985 throughout NASA’s shuttle period. The longest spaceflight by any of them was a few week.
“I’m at a loss for phrases to precise how completely happy I’m” for al-Neyadi, al-Mansoori tweeted after the launch.
The newcomers will exchange two NASA astronauts, a Japanese astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut who’ve been up there since October and will return in their very own SpaceX capsule subsequent week.
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