CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The first astronauts in additional than 40 years from India, Poland and Hungary arrived on the Worldwide House Station on Thursday, ferried there by SpaceX on a personal flight.
The crew of 4 will spend two weeks on the orbiting lab, performing dozens of experiments. They launched Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy House Heart.
America’s most skilled astronaut, Peggy Whitson, is the commander of the visiting crew. She works for Axiom House, the Houston firm that organized the chartered flight.
Apart from Whitson, the crew consists of India’s Shubhanshu Shukla, a pilot within the Indian Air Drive; Hungary’s Tibor Kapu, a mechanical engineer; and Poland’s Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, a radiation knowledgeable and one of many European House Company’s mission astronauts on non permanent flight responsibility.
Nobody has ever visited the Worldwide House Station from these international locations earlier than. The time anybody rocketed into orbit from these international locations was within the late Seventies and Eighties, touring with the Soviets.
“It’s an honor to have you ever be a part of our outpost of worldwide cooperation and exploration,” NASA’s Mission Management radioed from Houston minutes after the linkup excessive above the North Atlantic.
The brand new arrivals shared hugs and handshakes with the area station’s seven full-time residents, celebrating with drink pouches sipped by way of straws. Six nations have been represented: 4 from the U.S., three from Russia and one every from Japan, India, Poland and Hungary.
“It’s so nice to be right here lastly. It was an extended quarantine,” Whitson stated, referring to the crew’s extra-long isolation earlier than liftoff to remain wholesome.
They went into quarantine on Could 25, caught in it as their launch saved getting delayed. The most recent postponement was for area station leak monitoring, NASA needed to verify all the things was protected following repairs to a longtime leak on the Russian aspect of the outpost.
It’s the fourth Axiom-sponsored flight to the area station since 2022. The corporate is one among a number of which might be creating their very own area stations as a consequence of launch within the coming years. NASA plans to desert the Worldwide House Station in 2030 after greater than three many years of operation, and is encouraging personal ventures to exchange it.
