Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov has begun his five-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), becoming the fifth Russian to do so on Elon Musk’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. The Crew-9 mission, which is NASA’s ninth operational commercial crew mission, was launched by a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft, carrying Gorbunov and US astronaut Nick Hague, successfully reached its intended orbit and docked autonomously to the ISS on Sunday afternoon. NASA streamed live footage of the docking online. Musk, CEO of SpaceX, commented on the docking in a brief tweet: “Dragon has reached @Space_Station.
Gorbunov, from Russia’s state space agency Roscosmos, is on his first mission and will serve as a flight engineer aboard the ISS. Gorbunov and Hague will stay aboard the orbiting laboratory for five months. They have joined the Expedition 72 crew of cosmonauts Aleksandr Grebenkin, Aleksey Ovchinin, and Ivan Vagner, as well as NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, Jeanette Epps, Don Pettit, Butch Wilmore, and Suni Williams.
Gorbunov and Hague will return to Earth in February along with fellow ISS crew members Wilmore and Williams, who have been on the space station since June. The two arrived for a weeklong test mission aboard a Boeing Starliner aircraft but had to return home early due to technical issues. Crew-8 members Barratt, Dominick, Epps, and Grebenkin will depart the space station aboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft in early October.
Roscosmos and NASA have a cross-flight program that is valid until at least 2025. The program, launched in 2022 and extended the following year, involves sending one American astronaut to the ISS as part of the crew of a Russian spacecraft, and one Russian cosmonaut as part of an American crew. According to Roscosmos, Gorbunov is the 25th Russian cosmonaut to fly on an American ship, and the fifth to fly on a Crew Dragon.