NEW YORK, May 22. /TASS/. SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft with a four-person commercial crew docked at the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday. The docking was streamed on the website of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The docking occurred at 9:12 a.m. US East Coast time (4:12 p.m. Moscow time). The crew has begun the transition to the station.

The Falcon 9 rocket was launched earlier from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 5:37 p.m. on May 21, US East Coast time (00:37 a.m. of May 22 Moscow time). The crew is led by retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who has flown to the station three times and holds the NASA record for the cumulative time in orbit - 665 days. Also on the team are entrepreneur John Schoffner and Saudi astronauts Ali al-Qarni and Rayyanah Barnawi. During the nearly two-week mission, the crew will conduct more than 20 research and materials processing experiments.

In April 2022, NASA and Axiom Space carried out the first mission to bring a fully commercial crew to the ISS. Businessmen Larry Connor, Eytan Stibbe and Mark Pathy and former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria departed for the ISS aboard Crew Dragon on April 8. The space tourists were on the station the very next day. Their stay in orbit was to last about 10 days, but bad weather off Florida, which might prevent the crew from being picked up in the ocean after splashdown, postponed the undocking several times. The Ax-1 crew stayed on the ISS for 15 days.