The Crew-4 mission, which launched to the ISS on Wednesday, April 27, became the fastest journey for Crew Dragon astronauts.
“This is the fastest docking launch that"We've ever done," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's commercial crew program, said at a post-launch briefing. "It takes about the same amount of time to get from New York to Singapore."
Four Crew-4 astronauts reached the ISS in less thanin 16 hours, making it the shortest flight time of all six SpaceX crewed missions to the space station, including all Crew missions, the all-civilian Ax-1 and SpaceX DM-2. Let us remind you that this is the second demonstration and first manned flight to the ISS of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program for the development of private manned spacecraft.
The crew of Crew-4 launched on the new Crew capsuleDragon called Freedom on a Falcon 9 rocket at 07:52 GMT from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. After a total flight time of 15 hours 45 minutes and approximately 10 orbits around the Earth, the astronauts arrived at the space station at 23 :37 GMT.
For reference, the SpaceX Demo-2 mission in May 2020 took approximately 19 hours, while Crew-3 took almost a full day to reach the ISS.
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