New York, November 17: Newly launched capsule Crew Dragon of SpaceX docked at the International Space Station on Monday.  SpaceX Crew Dragon "Resilience" was scheduled to dock to the space station at about 11 pm EST on Monday. The capsule was due at the orbiting lab late Monday night, following a 27-hour, completely automated flight.

Crew Dragon "Resilience" propelled by Falcon 9 rocket was launched on Sunday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7.27 pm EST. It is the first NASA-certified commercial human spacecraft system in history. The capsule carried three NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker and one from Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Soichi Noguchi. SpaceX Crew-1 'Resilience' Launched Successfully Carrying Four NASA Astronauts to International Space Station.

The Crew-1 mission is the first of six crewed missions NASA and SpaceX will fly as part of the agency's Commercial Crew Programme. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in a statement said, ""NASA is delivering on its commitment to the American people and our international partners to provide safe, reliable, and cost-effective missions to the International Space Station using American private industry."

Notably, it is for the first time that the space station's long-duration expedition crew size has increased from six to seven crew members, which will add to the crew time available for research. Hopkins, Glover, Walker, and Noguchi will join the Expedition 64 crew of Commander Sergey Ryzhikov and Flight Engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 17, 2020 11:32 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).