Watch SpaceX Dragon spacecraft dock at International Space Station

By Dean Murray

Awesome scenes show the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docking at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday (March 16).

American astronaut Don Pettit captured the action as NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov arrived at the orbital outpost.

NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, as the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the orbiting complex at 12:04 a.m. EDT, while the station was roughly 260 statute miles over the Atlantic Ocean.

Following Dragon’s link up to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module, the crew members aboard Dragon and the space station were set to begin conducting standard leak checks and pressurization between the spacecraft and the station in preparation for hatch opening scheduled for approximately 1:45am. on Sunday.

Crew-10 will join the Expedition 72 crew of NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Don Petitt, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore, as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Aleksandr Gorbunov, Alexey Ovchinin, and Ivan Vagner.

The number of crew aboard the space station will increase to 11 people before Crew-9 members Hague, Williams, Wilmore, and Gorbunov return to Earth following the crew handover period.