New crew arrived at the International Space Station

Three Americans and one Italian replace the crew with the German astronaut Matthias Maurer. Three Russian cosmonauts remain in the space station.

The International Space Station (ISS) on April 20, 2022. The photo was taken by cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov.

Roscosmos / X80001

(dpa)

The replacement for the German astronaut Matthias Maurer is here: three Americans and one Italian have arrived at the International Space Station ISS. The American astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins as well as Samantha Cristoforetti, astronaut of the European Space Agency ESA, docked with a “Crew Dragon” capsule at the ISS, as the US space agency Nasa announced on Wednesday (local time).

Around 20 hours earlier, the four astronauts had started from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in the US state of Florida. This is the fifth time that Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX has brought astronauts to the ISS on behalf of NASA. It was the first flight to the space station for Hines and Watkins and the second for Lindgren and Cristoforetti.

The so-called “Crew-4” is to replace the “Crew-3” currently stationed on board the ISS – in addition to the German astronaut Maurer, these are the US astronauts Thomas Marshburn, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron. Until the return of “Crew-3” planned for the end of April, a total of eleven people will be stationed on the ISS for a short period of time, including cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov.

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