You don’t want any slip-ups when you are moving at 17,000mph and the astronauts aboard Elon Musk’s SpaceX Dragon were composure itself as they docked with the International Space Station (ISS).
Thirty hours after blast-off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center the multi-national crew caught up with its target 261 miles above Queensland, Australia.
On board are a Dane, an American, a Russian and a Japanese astronaut on a six-month mission to study space’s effects on microbial life and on human sleep patterns.
They join another seven astronauts already on board including America’s Woody Hoburg who had some advice for his new guests.
‘They’ll be very focused on their launch, their rendezvous, their docking,’ he said about his new crewmates from orbit Wednesday.
The crew of four make final preparations for the docking in the cockpit of their SpaceX Dragon capsule
Astronauts on the space station captured their colleagues approaching from below
‘And then once they get here, the timescales change completely.
‘We all feel like we want to go 100 miles an hour and put our training to use and be really effective right away. But it’s a long road ahead.’
‘So they’ll hopefully have a bit of time to just relax, enjoy themselves and get into the groove of living and working up here aboard the space station.’
The arrival of Crew 7 marks the eighth crewed mission flown for Nasa by Musk’s company since 2020 and was screened live by the space agency.
It comes days after the billionaire was sued by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department for discriminating against refugees and asylum-seekers in his hiring practices.
It said SpaceX ‘actively discouraged’ asylum seekers and refugees from seeking work at the company for four years in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act, and tried to blame export control laws.
US Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke pointed to ‘discriminatory’ tweets from Musk in which he posted ‘U.S. law requires at least a green card to be hired at SpaceX, as rockets are advanced weapons technology’.
On board his latest flight is US Naval test pilot Jasmin Moghbeli, 40, whose parents fled Iran during the 1979 revolution.
Everyone in the crew is from a different nation for the first time in Nasa’s history (L to R) Russia’s Konstantin Borisov, Denmark’s Andreas Mogensen, America’s Jasmin Moghbeli and Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa
Crew 7 smiled for the camera’s before Saturday’s launch
Astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli described launch aboard the Falcon 9 as an ‘awesome ride’
The launch went without a hitch at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida
Born in Germany and raised on New York’s Long Island, she joined the Marines and flew attack helicopters in Afghanistan.
Alongside her in the 13ft wide capsule is Dane Andreas Mogensen who began his career on oil rigs in West Africa before joining the European Space Agency.
Completing the most internationally diverse crew in Nasa’s history are Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa and Konstantin Borisov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos in his first mission to space.
During their six-month stay the astronauts will analyze the risk of bacteria and fungi being dispersed into space by man’s exploration, and check whether its already happening through the space station’s vents.
They will also investigate whether there are more efficient ways to recycle waste water on the space ship, and what effect sleeping in microgravity has on astronauts’ brain waves.
The crew carried a toy three-toed sloth as their mascot as they headed into space picked by Mogensen’s children claim he is usually the slowest in the family when leaving the house.
Their launch on a Falcon 9 rocket was described as ‘awesome’ by Moghbeli who hopes to show Iranian girls that they, too, can aim high.
‘Belief in yourself is something really powerful,’ she said before the flight.
‘This is something I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember,’ she explained during a media call last month.
The crew carried a toy three-toed sloth as their mascot as they headed into space
The approach took place 261 miles above Queensland, Australia
‘One of the things I’m most excited about is looking back at our beautiful planet.
‘Everyone who I’ve talked to who has flown already has said that was a life-changing perspective – and also floating around in space, it seems really fun.’
Four astronauts already on the space station are due to return to Earth in a few days, but not Nasa’s Frank Rubio who is due to break America’s endurance record in space with 371 days by the time he lands in Kazakhstan on September 27.
He was due back in March but a coolant leak in the Soyuz capsule that was due to take him put pay to the plan.
