SpaceX's Crew-8 astronaut mission arrived at the International Space Station early Tuesday morning (March 5).
The mission's Dragon capsule, named Endeavour, docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday at 2:28 a.m. EST (0728 GMT). Dragon and the station were soaring above the central North Atlantic just east of New Foundland at the time.
"Crew Dragon Endeavor welcome to the International Space Station. We would also like to note that you can't be 'crew late' when you arrive 30 minutes early." ground control radioed to the ISS shortly after docking.
"Dragon, from those of us onboard, welcome to the International Space Station, we disagree, you can still be crew late. Mike welcome back, we think a few things have changed since you left, Matt, Jeanette, Alexander you're absolutely going to love it here." Crew-7 commander Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA radioed to Crew-8 from the ISS.
Read more: SpaceX Crew-8 astronaut mission: Live updates
Crew-8 sent NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeannette Epps and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin to the orbiting lab for a six-month stay.
The four-person Crew-8 launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday (March 3) at 10:53 p.m. EST (0353 GMT on March 4).
Dominick is Crew-8's commander, Barrett is the pilot, and Epps and Grebenkin are mission specialists. Are all spaceflight rookies except Barratt, who already had two orbital missions under his belt before this one.
The quartet will relieve the four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-7 mission, who arrived at the ISS in August 2023 and will head home to Earth no earlier than March 11.
As its name suggests, Crew-8 is the eighth operational astronaut mission that SpaceX is flying to the ISS for NASA.
The agency signed a similar commercial-crew deal with aerospace giant Boeing, which aims to launch astronauts on its new Starliner capsule for the first time next month, on a trial mission called Crew Flight Test.
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