SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, carrying four astronauts for NASA’s Crew-12 mission, successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday.
The spacecraft lifted off at 5:15am Eastern Time on Friday aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and reached the Harmony module’s space-facing port at around 3:15pm Eastern Time the following day.
The crew includes NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
Over their nearly eight-month stay, Crew-12 will conduct a wide range of experiments aimed at advancing human exploration beyond low Earth orbit while delivering benefits for life on Earth. NASA said the team will study pneumonia-causing bacteria to support cardiovascular therapies, test technologies for producing intravenous fluids on demand, and examine how physical traits affect blood circulation in microgravity.
Other investigations will focus on automated plant health monitoring and the interactions between plants and nitrogen-fixing microbes, research that could help boost food production in space.
