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SpaceX Crew-5 boards the ISS – NASA

Crew Dragon docked automatically

NEW YORK, October 7. /TASS/. SpaceX Crew-5 boarded the International Space Station after the Crew Dragon spacecraft docked with the ISS on Thursday. The broadcast is conducted on the website of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The docking of Crew Dragon took place automatically at 00:01 a.m. Moscow time. After more than an hour and a half, the ship's hatch was opened.

The crew members - NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Kassada, Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata - moved to the ISS.

On Wednesday, Kikina became the first Russian cosmonaut to travel to the ISS on a Crew Dragon spacecraft as part of a cross-flight program between NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos. Initially, the launch was scheduled for October 3, but NASA experts postponed it twice due to Hurricane Ian. The crew will stay on the ISS for 145 days.

On July 15, Roscosmos announced the signing of an agreement on joint cross-flights by Russian and US cosmonauts to the ISS. The commander of the Roscosmos cosmonaut team, Oleg Kononenko, said the agreement envisaged three flights by Russian cosmonauts on the US spacecraft Crew Dragon. Under the cross-flight program US astronaut Frank Rubio set off for the ISS aboard the Russian spacecraft K. E. Tsiolkovsky (Soyuz MS-22) from the Baikonur cosmodrome on September 21.

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