A SpaceX Crew Dragon is about to rendezvous and dock with the Worldwide House Station for the third time later tonight and its four-astronaut crew took a while throughout their 27-hour flight to provide stay viewers a tour of the model new spacecraft.

Emphasizing simply how a lot area Crew Dragon provides its astronaut passengers as soon as in orbit, the tour additionally included a minor custom for NASA astronaut Victor Glover’s first orbital spaceflight. Astronauts Soichi Noguchi, Mike Hopkins, and Shannon Walker – all spaceflight veterans – commemorated Glover’s milestone with the present of a small, golden pin, persevering with a decades-old custom.

If Crew Dragon stays in good well being, the 4 astronauts will formally kick off the primary ISS docking try with a 90-second thruster burn shortly after 9 pm EST (02:00 UTC).

Fairly much like Crew Dragon’s flawless Demo-2 astronaut launch debut, the Crew-1 spacecraft is scheduled to reach at what is named the ISS keep-out sphere round half an hour after its ultimate main course-change thruster burn. Dragon will pause roughly 400m (~1300 ft) from the area station and await floor and station groups to provide it the go-ahead to proceed to a different stopped level 20m (65 ft) out.

Altogether, the Crew-1 Dragon docking course of will take about 55 minutes after the spacecraft enters the keep-out sphere and can culminate with a ‘gentle’ seize round 11pm EST (04:00 UTC) and a ‘onerous’ seize – signified by the docking port firmly bolting Dragon to the ISS – a bit lower than quarter-hour later.

Orbital sundown is predicted roughly 10 minutes earlier than docking, that means that Crew Dragon’s Crew-1 docking must be sunlit from a distance of ~1000 to twenty meters (3300 to 65 ft) from the ISS. Tune in beneath to look at the historic docking stay.