Washington: A SpaceX capsule due to bring home two US astronauts that have been stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) since June reached the space outpost in the early hours of Sunday, a stream of the docking operation showed.
On Friday evening, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket propelled the Dragon spacecraft into orbit carrying NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.
The spacecraft docked with the ISS at 00:04am (0404 GMT), NASA and SpaceX said. It is set to bring US astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, back to Earth. NASA said the capsule would depart the ISS on March 19 at the earliest.
Williams and Wilmore arrived at the ISS at the beginning of June on the first manned test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. They were only meant to stay in space for a week, but numerous technical problems with the craft left them stranded.
The Boeing-produced Starliner is a partially reusable spacecraft that consists of a capsule around 3 metres high for the crew and a service module. (DPA)
