SpaceX just set a new record for the fastest astronaut’s dragon flight to date.
Elon Musk’s spaceflight company launched four Crew-4 astronauts to NASA’s International Space Station in less than 16 hours on Wednesday (April 27), the shortest flight time since SpaceX manned flights began in 2020.
“This is the fastest docking launch we’ve ever done,” Steve Stitch, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Manager, told reporters after the launch early Wednesday. “It’s about the same time it takes to get from New York to Singapore, so it’s kind of interesting.”
SpaceX astronauts launched Crew-4 on a new Crew Dragon capsule called Freedom and Falcon 9 at 3:52 a.m. EDT (0752 GMT) from NASA’s Pad 39A Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The astronauts arrived at the space station later that night, and docked at 7:37 p.m. EDT (2337 GMT). Total flight time: 15 hours and 45 minutes.
Related: Stunning launch photos of SpaceX’s Crew-4 astronauts
For comparison, SpaceX’s first manned flight for NASA, the Demo-2 mission in May 2020, took about 19 hours to reach the station, while NASA’s final Crew-3 flight took nearly a full day.
“I would say it’s kind of lucky in terms of how that happened,” said Jessica Jensen, SpaceX’s vice president of customer operations and integration, adding that any delay could have changed the flight time. “You can vary 10 to 20 hours of grading that you only know in a day or two. It’s not really that we’ve changed anything, it’s just the orbital mechanics of where the ISS is and where it comes in over Florida.”
The Crew-4 mission launched three NASA astronauts and one European Space Agency astronaut to the space station to begin a six-month mission. Aboard the Dragon Crew, Freedom, was Crew-4 mission commander Kjell Lindgren; Bob Hines pilot. mission specialist Jessica Watkins (all NASA); and Mission Specialist Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency.
SpaceX’s shorter flight came before the spacewalk (ExtraVehicle Activity, or EVA in NASA parlance) two Russian cosmonauts did outside the space station Thursday, so docking and quickly settling down the Dragon crew was a bonus, NASA officials said.
“This short date was very favorable for us,” Stitch said. “We can get to the station a little faster and can make the preparations we need once we’ve docked to get the dragon ready for EVA.”
While the Crew-4 Dragon was SpaceX’s fastest flight to the station, it wasn’t the fastest manned flight ever. The Russian Soyuz spacecraft still holds this title, holding the Guinness World Record for the fastest time to Station B, a flight of 3 hours and 3 minutes in October 2020.
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