Overview
- SpaceX’s Dragon achieved soft capture at 20:15 UTC as the station passed over South Africa.
- The crew comprises commander Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, Russia’s Andrey Fedyaev, and France’s Sophie Adenot, the second French woman in space.
- The expedition is scheduled for about nine months, exceeding the program’s typical six-month rotations.
- The arrival replaces Crew-11, which returned on January 14 in the ISS’s first medical evacuation, after which Chris Williams, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, and Sergei Mikaev sustained reduced operations.
- The flight and final approach proceeded as planned after launch from Cape Canaveral, marking the 13th crew rotation under the NASA–SpaceX partnership.