SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance docked with the Harmony module of the International Space Station (ISS) at 0404 UTC Sunday, on March 16, while the two spacecraft were flying 418 kilometers above the Atlantic ocean. The hatches between the spacecraft and the ISS opened at 0535 UTC, allowing four new astronauts to float aboard the orbiting lab.
"It's such a great honor for us to be part of this program," Crew-10 mission specialist Takuya Onishi of JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) said shortly after docking. "We have a lot of exciting work ahead of us that we are looking forward to. Again, thank you very much to everybody who helped us to get here."
Astronaut Don Pettit in the space station, captured the approach and docking of Endurance with the orbiting lab, which he posted on X, Sunday.
The arrival of the Crew-10 astronauts -- Onishi, Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers and Kirill Peskov -- marks a significant step towards the return of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been stranded on the ISS since June 2024 due to issues with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft.
The Crew-10 astronauts will relieve Wilmore and Williams, along with two folks who have been living on the ISS for a while now -- NASA's Nick Hague and Roscosmos' Aleksandr Gorbunov. Hague and Gorbunov arrived at the station in late September, on SpaceX's Crew-9 mission.
Crew-10 will stay on the ISS for about six months, while Wilmore and Williams, along with Hague and Gorbunov, are scheduled to depart the station in SpaceX Crew-9 Dragon next week.
