New Delhi:
Air Force pilot Shubhanshu Shukla wrote a historic new chapter in the country’s space exploration story Thursday after becoming the first Indian to float into the International Space Station.
Live visuals from the ISS showed Shukla, and the other three astronauts on the Crew Dragon capsule, being helped through the vestibule connecting the spacecraft and the ISS. Each had big grins on their face and were welcomed with bear hugs by the seven astronauts already on the ISS.
The four then lined up for a photo op drinking liquids from a foil packet.
The capsule that carried the astronauts – part of Axiom-4, a private mission – docked this evening, completing a 28-hour flight from Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre to a point 424km over the northern Atlantic Ocean.
Docking is the procedure by which a spacecraft connects to the space station.
But before that docking can even begin the spacecraft must first rendezvous with the space station, meaning they must both be in the same orbital plane and be positioned close to each other.
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