The crew, consisting of Americans Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japanese Kimiya Yui and Russian Oleg Platonov, will spend at least six months in orbit, replacing colleagues who have been there since March. Spacex will bring the latter back to the earth at the earliest Wednesday.
“Hi, space station!”, Mike Fincke said immediately after the Crew Dragon capsule did successfully.
The mission is remarkable also because each of the members of the new crew had been initially distributed to other flights. Fincke and Yui were preparing for a Boeing Starliner mission, but the technical problems of the Starliner capsule postponed all the flights by at least 2026, thus forcing a reconfiguration of the crews, reports Noi.md with reference to.
Oleg Platonov, the Russian astronaut, had previously been withdrawn from the launching list of Soyuz due to an undesirable medical condition, but has now been reintroduced to the flight program.
With this arrival, the crew aboard the ISS increased temporarily to 11 people. The newcomers were welcomed with cold drinks and warm food, prepared by their colleagues already in orbit.
