A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying four astronauts will arrive at the International Space Station early Sunday (Aug. 27) and you can watch it all live online in a free livestream.
The Crew Dragon capsule Endurance is scheduled to reach the International Space Station (ISS) at 8:39 a.m. EDT (1239 GMT), where it will dock itself to a space-facing port on the outpost’s U.S.-built Harmony module.
The docking will mark the end of a nearly 30-hour journey for the capsule’s four-person crew, which launched in the wee hours of Saturday from NASA’s Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. You can watch the docking live online, courtesy of NASA TV and SpaceX, starting at 6:45 a.m. EDT (1045 GMT). It will appear at start time in the window above, or you can watch directly from NASA TV.
“SpaceX, thanks for the ride, it was awesome,” Crew-7 commander Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA said after the crew reached orbit. “Go Crew-7, awesome ride.”
SpaceX’s Crew-7 mission for NASA is ferrying Moghbeli to the ISS with a truly international crew: pilot Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency; and mission specialists Konstantin Borisov of Russia’s Roscosmos agency and Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The quartet is the first all-international crew, with members from four different agencies and countries, to fly on the same Dragon capsule.
The mission is the seventh operational commercial crew flight for NASA by SpaceX, and the company’s eighth for the U.S. space agency overall (including a crewed test flight). It is SpaceX’s 11th crewed mission when including three private astronaut flights in recent years.
The Crew-7 astronauts are beginning a six-month expedition to the space station and will relieve the four astronauts of NASA’s Crew-6 mission, who are due to return shortly after Moghbeli and her crew arrive.
Crew-7 is the first spaceflight for Moghbeli, a U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel who became the second Iranian-American to fly in space on the flight. It is also Borisov’s first flight.
Related: Meet the astronauts of Crew-7 flying with SpaceX
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While Morgensen and Furukawa have both flown to the ISS before, Morgensen is the first European ever to pilot a SpaceX Dragon capsule. SpaceX’s Endurance capsule is also a space veteran, having flown the Crew-3 and Crew-5 astronaut missions to the station for NASA.
NASA and SpaceX have a special treat planned for Crew-7’s arrival at the ISS on Sunday.
“We’re gonna do a fly around fly around of the International Space Station and get some cool photos, and get that out to everybody to show what an awesome outpost we have,” Joel Montalbano, NASA’s space station program manager, told reporters after the launch.
