"Just this morning, the four Crew-4 astronauts were launching from NASA Kennedy. Now they're being greeted by the crew of the Space Station. Watch as they enter their new digs," NASA tweeted late Wednesday. The agency’s website provided live coverage through docking and hatch opening.
Much earlier, NASA announced that the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft launched on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission to the International Space Station from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
On board were NASA astronaut and mission commander Kjell Lindgren; Robert Hines, pilot; Jessica Watkins, mission specialist, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.
Lindgren, Hines, Watkins, and Cristoforetti will join the space station’s Expedition 67 crew of NASA astronauts, ESA, and cosmonauts of Roscosmos. For a short time, the number of crew aboard the space station will increase to 11 people until Crew-3 astronauts return to Earth a few days later.
This Crew-4 mission is the first launch for Hines and Watkins, who is the first Black woman to live and work aboard the space station.
The Crew-4 astronauts are expected to spend several months aboard the space station conducting new scientific research in areas such as materials science, health technologies, and plant science to prepare for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and to benefit life on Earth.
Watkins grew up in Lafayette, Colorado, and studied geology at Stanford University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. As a geologist, she studied the surface of Mars and was a science team collaborator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, working on the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity. She also was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017, and this is her first trip to space.
This is Cristoforetti's second trip to space following five months in 2015 as a flight engineer for Expeditions 42 and 43. Born in Milan, Italy, she was a fighter pilot in the Italian Air Force prior to being selected as an ESA astronaut in 2009. In 2019, she served as commander for NASA’s 23rd Extreme Environment Mission Operations mission on a 10-day stay in Aquarius, the world’s only undersea research station.
Just this morning, the four #Crew4 astronauts were launching from @NASAKennedy. Now they're being greeted by the crew of the @Space_Station. Watch as they enter their new digs. pic.twitter.com/nifrIHBo5f
— NASA (@NASA) April 28, 2022
