A total of seven astronauts and cosmonauts are currently on board the International Space Station (ISS) after Crew-3's successful docking on Thursday.
The Crew-3 mission launched on Wednesday with four astronauts aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule.
By Thursday evening the capsule had made its way to the ISS and the astronauts soon transferred themselves from one to the other.
This means that those on board the ISS right now are: Kayla Barron, U.S. astronaut; Raja Chari, U.S. astronaut; Pyotr Dubrov, Russian cosmonaut; Thomas Marshburn, U.S. astronaut; Matthias Maurer, German astronaut; Anton Shkaplerov, Russian cosmonaut; and Mark Vande Hei, U.S. astronaut.
Barron, Chari, Marshburn, and Maurer are the members of Crew-3 who have only just arrived.
They have replaced the four members of Crew-2, who returned home on Monday. They were U.S. astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide.
A video posted on Twitter by NASA on Thursday night shows the Crew-3 team emerging from the Dragon capsule and into the ISS, where they each embraced their new station co-inhabitants.
Four new astronauts through the hatch and seven crewmembers total on the @Space_Station!
— NASA (@NASA) November 12, 2021
After almost exactly a day from launch, #Crew3 is aboard the orbiting laboratory. pic.twitter.com/QJoBUsJcsj
As its name suggests, Crew-3 is the third ISS crew rotation mission undertaken by NASA and SpaceX as part of the Commercial Crew Program. The program aims to launch astronauts to the ISS from U.S. soil using U.S. technology in partnership with private companies.
Crew-3 are due to remain on board the ISS until April 2022.
With seven people on board, the ISS is at its standard capacity but actually relatively roomy compared to the record number of people who have been in it at the same time—13, according to Space.com.
Crowding on board the ISS tends to happen between switchovers when a replacement crew arrives before the outgoing crew has left.
This happened in April this year, when the four Crew-2 astronauts arrived bringing the total number of people on board to 11.
This exceeded the number of astronaut beds the ISS could provide—there were only four in the U.S. segment—so some crew members ended up sleeping in SpaceX's Dragon capsules which were still attached to the station, or otherwise setting up makeshift beds that were placed wherever there was space. One astronaut reportedly slept in the airlock!
Happily the crowding was only temporary since the Crew-1 team that Crew-2 was replacing set off on their journey home four days later.
The ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2000, supporting crews for more than 20 years.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
