Departing on the morning of March 4, the Crew-8 mission is now heading towards the International Space Station (ISS). While waiting for the meeting, scheduled for the evening of March 5, SpaceX provides a site to follow the Crew Dragon capsule in real time above the Earth.
The Crew-8 crew has, as planned, left Earth. Originally scheduled for March 3, 2024, the flight was delayed by a day due to strong winds at high altitude. Finally, the Falcon 9 rocket broke free from Earth’s gravity at dawn on March 4 (it was around 5 a.m. Paris time), from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Space rendezvous at 28,000 km/h
From now on, the four astronauts aboard the Crew Dragon capsule orbit the Earth. The objective of the spacecraft is to describe increasingly wide loops, to bring it closer to the altitude where the International Space Station (ISS) is located. The superstructure operates nearly 400 km above the ground.
An operation that is all the more delicate as height is not the only data to consider for a successful space rendezvous. We must also take into account the trajectory of the ISS above the Earth (fortunately predictable, which allows us to know when it passes nearby to see it) and its speed of movement (around 28,000 km/h).
While waiting for the meeting between the ISS and the capsule, SpaceX provides a site which allows you to follow the journey of the Crew-8 mission above the Earth. The site provides an interactive globe that can be moved at will with the mouse, in order to see the course of Crew Dragon and the position of the ISS. The meeting, which will end with the docking of the vessel, is scheduled for 8:15 p.m. (Paris time), March 5, 2024.
The four travelers (Alexandre Grebionkine, Barratt, Matthew Dominick and Jeanette Epps) will stay six months on the ISS. They will meet seven other astronauts (Andreas Mogensen, Jasmin Moghbeli, Satoshi Furukawa, Loral O’Hara Konstantin Borisov, Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub). Some will return to Earth this spring.
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