NewzVille International
At sharp 2:31 a.m. EDT, the crew members of Axiom Mission 4 lifted off on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the International Space Station (ISS).
Peggy Whitson, former NASA astronaut and director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space, is commanding the commercial mission, while ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) astronaut Capt. Shubhanshu Shukla is serving as pilot. The two mission specialists are ESA (European Space Agency) project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary.
NASA ended the coverage approximately 15 minutes after launch, following Dragon orbital insertion.
The spacecraft will dock autonomously to the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at approximately 7 a.m. on Thursday, June 26. NASA’s live rendezvous and docking coverage will begin at 5 a.m. on NASA+.
