Cape Canaveral, Florida – The first astronauts, who have arrived from India in more than 40 years, arrived at the International Space Station on Thursday, taking SpaceX on a private flight there ferry.
The staff of the four will be at Orbiting Lab for two weeks and conduct dozens of experiments. They were launched Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Peggy Whitson, the most experienced astronaut in the United States, is the commander of the visiting crew. She works for Axiom Space, a Houston company that arranges charter flights.
In addition to Whitson, the crew also included Indian Air Force pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India. Tibor Kapu of Hungary, mechanical engineer; Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland is a radiation expert and one of the project astronauts for the temporary flight duties of the European Space Agency.
No one has visited the International Space Station from these countries before. Anyone who poured into orbit from these countries was traveling with the Soviet Union in the late 1970s and 1980s.
“It’s an honor to join our international collaboration and exploration post,” NASA’s mission control broadcasted from Houston after being high in Linkup above the North Atlantic.
Newcomers shared hugs and handshakes with seven full-time residents of the space station and drank them in straws with drink pouches. There are representatives of six countries: four from the United States, three from Russia, and one from Japan, India, Poland and Hungary.
“It’s great to finally be here,” Whitson said, referring to the extra-long quarantine of the crew before they take off to stay healthy.
They entered quarantine on May 25 as their launches were constantly delayed. The latest delay is for space station leak monitoring, and NASA wants to ensure that everything is safe after a prolonged leak at Russian outposts.
This is the fourth axiom sponsored flight since 2022. The company is one of several companies that have developed their own space stations due to the launch of the next few years. NASA plans to abandon the International Space Station in 2030 after more than three decades of operations and encourage private companies to replace it.
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