The launch of the Falcon 9 rocket was postponed by one day. But, August 1, the rocket took off from a site in Florida, and today the Dragon Spacecraft successfully docked at the International Space Station (ISS). The Dragon spacecraft brought with itself the Crew-11 mission team of astronauts. The successful docking to the International Space Station was completed on August 2 and was yet another success in space for both the ISS and SpaceX.

The launch of the next crew of four space adventurers was scheduled for July 31, but was postponed due to the weather. Nearly ideal conditions are needed to ensure a safe launch. Before the flight, Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Bakanov, who was in the United States on a working visit, met with the crew.

Oleg Platonov, a Russian, joined the crew. This is his first flight into space. He was accompanied by Zena Kardman, Michael Fink (NASA) and Kimiya Yui (Japanese Space Agency). This flight was the first spacewalk for Zena Kardman and Oleg Platonov, while Mike Finke and Kimiya Yui returned to the space station again. The time-tested Crew Dragon Endeavour ship was used, which had successfully completed five previous flights.

Image above: Crew of Crew-11: Oleg Platonov (Roscosmos), Michael Fink, Zena Kardman (NASA) and Kimiya Yui (JAXA), Source: NASA

An important aspect was the discussion of the possible extension of the standard six-month mission to eight months, which will optimize NASA’s budget. Thus, the Crew-11 mission became a significant milestone in the development of international cooperation and demonstrated the high reliability of SpaceX’s technology.

This mission on the ISS coordinated with Russia is pivotal in moving progress towards long term space inhabitation forward. Besides budget concerns if we are going to start construction projects in space or on alien worlds we must be able maximize the time that those working on them can be outside of Earth’s pleasant environment.