Watch: NASA and SpaceX Crew-6 Mission docks to the ISS after a few tense moments

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour, has finally docked with the International Space Station, thus marking the 6-month long stay of the four members of the Crew-6 mission at the ISS. While the flight of the spacecraft from the Earth to the ISS went considerably smoothly, there was a slight glitch right before the Dragon capsule was set to dock with the ISS’s Harmony Module.

Dragon docked to the International Space Station pic.twitter.com/bH7d90f6P4

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 3, 2023

Things could have gone horribly wrong The SpaceX Crew-6 mission, for the most part, was ahead of its schedule for today. The four crew members of the Crew Dragon Endeavour were supposed to dock with the ISS’s Harmony capsule 12:43 AM ET on Friday. The Dragon capsule has been designed in such a way that it would dock itself automatically. The crew on board the capsule and the crew already positioned in the ISS would just need to monitor things, along with NASA and SpaceX engineers on earth. However, about 20-30 metres away from the docking point, the capsule revealed that things were not quite right. The Dragon capsule has about 12 hooks that would latch on to the docking station of the Harmony capsule. As the Dragon capsule was drifting towards the docking station, one of the hooks, started showing some errors. As it turns out the hook had a faulty sensor, because of which it would have made the docking procedure much more complicated. The Crew-6 Dragon capsule finally docks The ground controllers then did a quick troubleshooting of the software issue, essentially allowing the crew on the Crew Dragon Endeavour capsule to override the warning and begin their final approach and docking to the Harmony module. At precisely 1:40AM ET, the Crew 6 Dragon Endeavour capsule docked with the ISS. Following the Dragon’s connection to the Harmony module, the astronauts onboard the space station and the Dragon started performing the routine leak tests and pressurisation between the spacecraft in preparation for the hatch opening, which took place at 3:18AM ET as scheduled, NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, along with UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev were now finally inside the International Space Station. All is well on board the ISS The Crew-6 will accompany NASA astronauts Frank Rubio, Nicole Mann, and Josh Cassada on Expedition 68, as well as JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) pilot Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin, and Anna Kikina.

Welcome to your new home in orbit, #Crew6! @SpaceX's Dragon Endeavour spacecraft arrived at the @Space_Station and docked at 1:40am ET (0640 UTC). pic.twitter.com/Aa6Xcd5GQZ

— NASA (@NASA) March 3, 2023

The number of crew members on the space station will temporarily rise to 11 until Crew-5 departs in a few days. The Crew 6’s six-month-long mission will include approximately 200 tests and technology demos spanning from human cell development in space to regulating combustible materials in microgravity. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.