Crew-4 Mission | Approach and Docking

in integrated operations for the past about 30 minutes we will have some commentators from their mission control join us just here shortly we're about nine minutes out from that ai burn or that approach initiation burn hello and thanks for tuning in to the nasa spacex crew 4 mission a long duration rotational mission to the international space station i'm kate tys quality systems engineering manager here at spacex and i'm joined by nasa's dan hewitt now we're just a few hours away from the final approach and docking of dragon to the international space station the crew is awake and ready to monitor the final steps so let's recap the mission thus far launch day preparation started early for the crew members on their launch day about four hours prior to the launch they completed their final medical checks and then joined the spacex team to get into their spacesuits and then after suit up in the nasa operations and checkout building they walked out wave final farewells to their family and friends outside and then got on to their next destination the launch pad it was about a 20 minute ride out to pad 39a where falcon 9 and crew dragon were waiting for them just two and a half hours before launch they ingress they got inside the dragon spacecraft walked through the after walking through the crew access arm got a last look out of the windows at the florida space coast uh and then got into the white room and into the vehicle and then about 40 minutes prior to the launch crew access arm retracted t-minus 35 the launch escape system was armed that got the crew dragon ready to escape if necessary and then we got on to the propellant loading and so we were able to get all the propellants onto the vehicle that started with about 35 minutes to go so we got all of the fuel the oxidizer on both the first and the second stage of falcon 9 and then just five minutes before launch we went into terminal count with all the onboard computers taking control of the vehicle and then of course the moment we were all waiting for at 3 52 a.m eastern 12 52 a.m pacific the nine merlin m1d engines ignited and falcon 9 lifted off from space launch complex 39a marking the fourth time humans rode dragon into orbit with falcon 9 first stage at full power our crew began their journey to the international space station in fact on the screen you see right now that's a live view of dragon on their way to the station now just after the t plus nine minute mark the first stage landed on the autonomous spaceport drone ships dragon spacex dragging the ground ready to copy yeah we just wanted to give you guys a heads up that uh during the pao event uh the light on the front of the uh and so we weren't sure if it was still transmitting or not but it sounds like you were still getting it from uh from your end but we want to let you know that that light is extinguished okay copy all your voice call dropped out want to clarify that the light on the floater cam dropped out during the media event yeah that's a good read back about halfway through the event we noticed the light was not illuminated but i think you guys were still receiving videos that's a good intuition we had video the whole time and expected the light to go out not necessarily at that time but i expected it to go out so all good okay sounds good just want to make sure you're aware thanks all right so some back and forth there with spacex core or crew operations and resources lead jake vendel uh smooth velvety voice with jake uh really just uh communicating back and forth with the crew the crew just letting us know on the ground um the the light dropped out from the camera that they were using uh but all good um so back to the quick recap we were doing uh just after the drone ship landed on our our excuse me just after our first stage booster landed on our drone ship which was stationed out in the atlantic ocean uh we had spacecraft spacecraft separation where we saw dragon finally flying free now our initial orbit after dragon separated from falcon 9 was 210 kilometers by 190 kilometers now for those that might not be familiar those values represent the orbit apogee or the highest point over earth and the perigee or the lowest point over earth basically meaning that uh the orbit is not a perfect sip is not a perfect circle and rather more of an ellipse and over the last several hours dragon's been gradually raising that orbit just 50 minutes after liftoff we executed the phase burn about 1 41 a.m pacific time 8 41 gmt uh that was the first the five major burns required to raise dragon's orbit and position it for that final approach the international space station which we're coming up on very soon and it's used the draco thrusters on the vehicles several times over the last several hours as it continues to chase station down and just a few hours ago the boost burn took place at 10 34 a.m or 5 34 p.m gmt uh the boost burn put our crew in an orbit where dragon's apogee or that highest point that i mentioned will be 10 kilometers lower than the station after that we executed the close coalitic burn at 11 19 a.m pacific the close burn placed dragon on an orbit roughly co-elliptic with the space station meaning it was maintaining an orbit roughly 10 kilometers lower than the station the entire way around earth that's in contrast to only being 10 kilometers lower than the station during dragon's apogee or the highest point in its obit orbit which is achieved by the boost burn and then after that we kicked off the transfer burn that took place about 1207 pm pacific 1907 gmt uh that was the fourth major maneuver it's the transfer burn that's where we're raising dragons apogee or again the highest point of its orbit to just two and a half kilometers lower in the station and then we rounded everything out with that final co-elliptic burn about 12 53 p.m pacific 1953 gmt to again once we're just maintaining a constant orbital altitude below the station except this time it was just about two and a half kilometers below that was a shorter burn uh lasting just about uh 37 seconds and so now we're getting into the approach initiating and the approach initiation and the final stages we're actually just about a minute and a half away from the ai burn and at this point we're into what's known as integrated operations between the dragon control team here in hawthorne and the space station flight controllers in mission control houston they made this transition after we hit what's called rendezvous complete that essentially means that we've executed all those major phasing burns and the dragon is now navigating towards the space station using what's called relative gps we'll talk through a couple of those navigation items in a little bit but we're about a minute away from that ai burn now during approach uh spacex flight controllers will work in tandem with the nasa team in houston to maneuver dragon freedom to the proper altitude and initialize the navigation sensors used for the methodical approach to station they'll also activate and test out a number of systems on dragon including bi-directional communications with the station using the c2 v2 system c2 v2 stands for common communications for visiting vehicles it sets up a data stream from dragon to the station giving another path for dragon telemetry to come to ground and giving an additional command capability to astronauts aboard the station and right now we're just 20 seconds or so away from this ai burn so we should hear a call out up to the crew that it has started and again we're going to be using these thrusters we're only about two and a half kilometers below the station about seven kilometers behind it and this is going to swing dragon up until it's just about a quarter mile or about 400 meters directly below and we just heard confirmation that the burn has started so dragons now on its approach so we're out of the rendezvous point we're now approaching inside we're going to move inside one of the first imaginary checkpoints around the space station called the approach ellipsoid you'll hear it called uh the ae on some of the operational comps it's an imaginary shape around the space station it's four kilometers by two kilometers by two kilometers we a lot of times call it the pizza box um and it's essentially just a really large three-dimensional oval and before dragon is allowed to move inside that approach ellipsoid it's on what's known as a 24-hour safe trajectory or 24-hour free drift and that just means that if dragon lost all control towards thrusters we know for at least 24 hours its trajectory would not take it inside that approach ellipsoid but now that we've executed that ai burn we're moving inside that approach ellipsoid dragon's now beginning in its approach to the station yeah uh now the nasa and spacex teams will do a go no-go pull to move dragon inside that keep out sphere another checkpoint that consists of an imaginary sphere around the station it has a radius of 200 meters safe to say we love imaginary shapes around the station flight controllers use this to monitor all arriving and departing vehicles this is another chance to confirm all of the guidance navigation navigation and control systems are working correctly on dragon before moving closer to the station it carries a similar requirement on the orbital trajectory that if dragon were to sum dragon spacex on the big loop ai burn complete and nominal as a reminder you may now review the impulsive retreat recovery q cards as desired all right good news there the live view of dragon getting closer and closer to the international space station carrying the crew 4 crew that tracking camera does track dragon uh and it has to move every so often to keep dragon in the view there yeah we've we've got a console called cronus in mission control and they are the video wizards for us they super talented operators for sure they managed to snag views of dragon a couple of hours ago it sounded like so i feel like they just keep trying to break their own record for how soon they can see it but uh getting some daylight views seeing dragon come into focus yeah um so getting back to the imaginary shapes we were talking about um so it carries a similar requirement on the orbital trajectory that if dragon were to somehow lose control of its thrusters uh it and the space station would be safe for four orbits or about six hours rather than the 24 hours required to enter the approach ellipsoid once dragon arrives at 400 meters below station it will be at what is known as waypoint 0 and will be the first checkpoint during our approach the vehicle can hold here at 400 meters but if all of its systems for that all that systems check out then we can continue to approach to waypoint one right now it looks like we're expecting to hit waypoint zero in about 44 minutes um on the way there dragon will execute another maneuver called the mid-course burn this just helps fine-tune its approach uh towards the space station uh once we get through waypoint zero though we'll move on to waypoint one and the again the joint nasa spacex teams are doing go no goes for essentially the next waypoint before we hit the one we're headed towards so before we get to waypoint zero they'll do a joint go no go to move on to waypoint one and once we go from zero up to one we're gonna swing up and out in front of the station and then arrive just over top of it at a distance of about 220 meters so we'll still be outside that keep out sphere that kate was talking about but at that point we'll be on what's called the docking axis so that just means we're pointing directly in front of our docking port uh and for this flight they're headed to the node two zenith port that's the space-facing side uh the no two forward port already has a dragon vehicle attached to it that carry crew 3 and pretty soon we'll have two dragons attached bringing the station crew up to 11. now there's two international docking adapters on the station they're no two forward no two zenith of the space facing and these were installed specifically for these new commercial space flights they use what's known as the international docking standard so that's a standard that nasa developed with other partners around the world to hopefully build a common docking mechanism or at least a set of standards for docking mechanisms for future spacecraft once dragon is only 20 meters away at waypoint 2. the spacecraft focuses on aligning its docking system with the international docking adapter that dan was just talking about we may hear the call out chop which stands for crew hands off point a little less than 30 seconds before docking uh at this point any aborts will then have to be done automatically by dragon and then the moment that we're all waiting for when the crew arrives at station dragon will fly in it'll make contact with the international docking adapter giving what we call soft capture the soft capture ring has essentially some pedals that drive into the docking adapter and then the soft capturing retracts until its sensors indicate that dragon's in a good spot and then there's 12 hooks two sets of six that drive uh to give us hard capture and firmly secure dragon to the international space station and as if you've been following along shaniqua varinover and mission control houston's been giving us the updates we are expecting a docking a little bit earlier than expected so we had already heard that uh this is going to be one of the fastest rendezvous we've done yet on a crew dragon and right now we're looking at docking at about let me pull up my time again real quick while you do that i'll just say that it's uh to my recollection i could be wrong it i think this is the first time that we've done everything in one single calendar day so you know we launched early in the morning this morning um and and then now we're getting ready to dock here this afternoon evening yeah and that that docking time right now it's targeted it's 440 pacific uh 640 central um that's an 11 40 gmt and so that's about 40 minutes earlier than what we were initially expecting but on board the space station the station crew is awake and they're ready to receive dragon uh nasa astronaut tom marshburn is lead for the monitoring duties and he's also going to be the lead for all of the hatch operations so he's got equipment set up to monitor dragon's approach inside the space station's cupola and once we get dragon docked he'll be the lead for essentially going through the steps we need to go through to get the hatch open first we have to pressurize the vestibule that's that small space between dragon's hatch and the station hatch and he just opens up a small valve on the station side to just flow atmosphere in there and then we won't be able to see it but while that happens umbilicals will connect two of them from station to dragon that integrates uh dragon into the station's power data systems allowing it to not rely on its solar razer batteries it can just draw power from the station itself so everything continuing to go smoothly so far you did hear one item that got called up to the crew the team here in hawthorne was talking about a dragon eye and some of the issues we've been tracking with it the dragon eye is one of the core pieces of navigation equipment that are used for final approach at docking it's we have two of them on dragon and they essentially use lidar bouncing lasers off of reflectors on the station as well as thermal imagers to get range range rate information that feeds back into dragon's flight computer in real time and we've had a couple of issues when they do what's called a built-in test just a checkout of those dragon eyes with one of them dragon eye one uh after additional analysis the teams that essentially decide determined that the test is failing as it's overly sensitive it's passed several of the tests but again that is one of the critical items that we use during that final approach so they've told the crew we have a forward plan we only need one of those to do the final rendezvous and docking and so if any issues do crop up with dragon i1 we can use dragon eye 2 for all of our final approach operations and so that's the only item we've been tracking for the ascent so far today and at this point we're still all systems go for the docking so we just we just did that approach initiation maneuver and next up is going to be that mid-course burn now we did mention that we launched earlier this morning in the the wee hours of the night just after uh midnight so we launched at 12 52 a.m pacific time 752 eastern and uh up until this point the crew has gone through a sleep period of course everything is super scheduled whether you're on station or in a dragon you know the crew has to be ready to go whenever they get on station particularly for the the upcoming docking activities so they have gone through their sleep phase they've had their two meals at this point and yeah as dan said we're getting ready to enter the docking phases here that's a live view of the dragon freedom capsule it seems like it's moving fast because it is that tracking camera has to keep playing catch up with the capsule of course you know in orbit they're going 17 500 miles per hour in order to meet the space station so yeah things are moving pretty quickly yeah and dragon's still closing in right now it's a little over five kilometers away from the space station still we'll execute that mid-course maneuver and then once we hit waypoint zero that's our first waypoint during the final approach we'll just be 400 meters away so we'll be directly beneath the space station uh and inside the approach ellipsoid still outside the keep out sphere uh it's closing in right now at a rate of just about four and a half meters per second so things are definitely slow and steady during the approach uh during the actual final approach into docking uh dragon will slow down to less than a tenth of a meter per second and then all again all of this is being done automatically dragon's flight computers have been in control of this mission essentially since liftoff and it's been constantly recalculating all of the different burn times on the way uphill and then feeding its own basically planting systems to calculate how long the next burn will be what time that's going to happen and thanks to a pretty efficient flight uphill today we're going to be able to dock early so we just passed under five kilometers away just a one quick point of clarification that dragon eye one failed two tests early on those built-in tests but has passed all recent tests we have redundancy with dragon eye 1 and dragon eye 2 they are they are both passing so at this moment we're still we're coming up on that mid-course burn that'll be in a little over 13 minutes from now uh dragon uses the draco thrusters to execute all of these maneuvers there's 16 of those on the dragon spacecraft there's 12 clustered around what we call the service section that's just the lower part of the capsule not on the trunk but still integrated into the capsule and there's four clusters of three around the service section and then there's also what we call the forward bulkhead thrusters and those are four that are hidden by the nose cone during ascent but once we get that open uh they're unveiled and the ones in the forward bulkhead do a lot of the pushing maneuvers so when we're doing those long burns to raise our orbit up that's being handled by those forward bulkhead thrusters and then the ones around the service section are doing a lot of your attitude control and what we call translational moves so moving side to side up down and depending on the lighting conditions usually during the final approach when you start to see the plumes shooting out of dragon it's going from those service section dracos and each one of those provides about 90 pounds uh force of thrust so definitely not in the neighborhood of what you see on a falcon 9 or even the super dracos but that is more than enough uh to to do your orbital maneuvers in uh while you're in the vacuum um this is this is a pretty cool view so on the left here we're looking at one of the cameras on the space station at the very bottom and kind of that big gold panel you see that's the solar flex solar array on the cygnus cargo craft that's one of the u.s commercial cargo craft currently birthed to the space station and then just behind that i have to look at my charts but that's either a so user of russian progress i believe that's a soyuz dock to the um spacex ready to copy okay we got the cabin situated uh we've got four suited crew members and good intercom checks okay copy all completion of suit donning we on the ground are ready for suit leak checks so you are go for 4.011 at this time we are also looking for a go to bring cameras back on board okay copy that you have a go to bring cameras on board and we have a go for 4.011 all right so at this point in time crew 4 crew members have put their suits back on or donned as you heard it called and they are getting back into their seats putting those safety harnesses back on and we will perform a leak check on those suits just to make sure that everything is connecting uh to the umbilicals properly those umbilicals provide um telemetry and cool air and uh communications uh to the dragon spacecraft from the suits themselves so the suit is basically an extension of the spacecraft while they're while they're seated in their in their seats and buckled in all right so we are just under 10 minutes away from that that mid-course burn that's just again that's a very small maneuver uh done as dragon moves from the start of its approach initiation up to waypoint zero so that'll be just a quick firing and then after that we'll be about 20 minutes away the arrival at our first waypoint that'll place dragon just about 400 meters directly below the space station so we do have a bit of time until we get through all those other phases of docking and so we'll try and take some of your questions if you want to use the hashtag ask nasa if you have any questions about dragon anything about the approach anything like that head over to twitter use that hashtag ask nasa and we'll try to get through a couple and the spacex freedom crew is ready to pressurize freedom spacex go for suit pressurization and freedom copy go for super pressurization and work all right and as kate was talking about so the crew they're they're getting suited up they're gonna do another leak check they've they've done several of these in the last 24 hours we saw them uh do it inside the suit up room uh when they first got suited up with the spacex team did it again after they climbed into dragon while we were still on the pad before we got an ascent and now they're going to do them again as they're going to be in these suits for all of the rendezvous and docking and then once we dock they'll be able to get out yeah and that doesn't even count you know the dry dress rehearsal that we did right uh a couple gosh time is really wonky this week with all the crew activity that we've had here um but i'll just say at some point within the last several days dry dress occurred and uh yeah they went through all those same steps again basically practicing as if they were going to space um minus the part where you know the rocket actually takes off [Laughter] yeah so they'll get through that leak check and then they'll they'll remain in the suits until they're docked to the space station they don't keep the suits pressurized the entire time uh they'll seal them up have visors down for the leak check and then they'll essentially get into their quiescent configuration where the crew can essentially open up a zipper leave the suit unsealed and they'll just be flowing conditioned or cooled cabin air through the suits just to keep them cool as they're in those seats i will only pressurize the suits if they're needed to respond to any kind of off nominal situation but just checking in on times real quick we're a little over seven seven minutes away from the mid-course burn and then we expect to hit waypoint zero in about 28 minutes from now and again we're just a little over a little under an hour and a half away from our expected docking time though and so dragon's gonna continue to approach it'll hit waypoint zero again it'll be just about 400 meters below the space station it might hang out there but if the teams give the joint go before that they'll move white right through waypoint zero and start to move towards waypoint one uh which will have dragon essentially do a 180 degree maneuver around the space station going from directly below to directly above and at that point they'll be on what's known as the docking axis lined up with their docking port on the space-facing side of node two and then they'll be ready to begin that final approach but everything continuing to look great let's check in with the space station freedom uh we're showing four nominals with freedom spacex on dragon to ground we see the same four good leak checks next up mid-course maneuver in just over five minutes all right four good suit leak checks reported by the crew confirmed by the ground and next steps that mid-course maneuver in just under five and a half minutes so let's jump over to shaniqua vereen who's standing by with the teams in mission control houston leading our joint operations for today over to you shaniqua thanks dan and welcome back to mission control houston at nasa's johnson space center we're currently being led by flight director adi boulos and to his right is capcom alex kanelankos currently we're monitoring the iss and crew is awake and preparing for crew dragon's arrival current station commander tom marshburn is going to be prime or the main person monitoring dragon's approach from the station's cupola he will be using and setting up special software to track dragon's approach and making sure it stays in the expected zones once dragon is docked marshburn will be primed to start hatch opening operations he'll start by opening the large hatch on node 2 zenith giving access into the pressurized mating adapter the crew will then have to pressurize the vestibule which that small space between the hatches on the dragon and the space station this was exposed to vacuum prior to docking so the crew will need to fill it with air and make sure it's pressurized to nearly equal the atmospheric pressure on dragon and the station marshburn will use a small valve on the station's hatch to solely introduce air into the station's vestibule flight controllers here in houston will monitor the and verify the pressure readings here to make sure that everything is leak free before we get ready to open those hatches again everything looking good over here on mission control houston and we're still on our way and ready for cruise forward's arrival again we're excited to see those crew for astronauts aboard the station and we're excited to get our crew 4 astronauts aboard the station and we're working on handover between crew 4 and crew 3 astronauts who are set to undock just five days from now that's the latest from here in mission control houston now back over to you hawthorne all right thanks shaniqua glad to hear everything so looking good on the station side and excited also here to see another dragon dock to the space station we're pretty soon we're gonna have 11 people on board the space station at once so it'll be a packed house for a couple of days uh they'll do the direct hand over and then it's time for crew 3 to come home yeah the fun's not done with crew 4 right uh yeah we're very much looking forward to bringing crew 3 crew home you know they've been up there for a while and i'm sure they're ready to come home and see their families uh but yeah you're absolutely right you know it's been certainly a busy week uh we had the axiom one crew return from station earlier this week and then of course liftoff and hopefully hopefully soon docking for the crew 4 crew and yeah wrapping up a dynamic week of astronaut missions here at spacex yeah and as was talked a little bit earlier i guess it was still this morning uh we're looking at about may 4th for that crew 3 departure which will set them up for a splashdown on may 5th biggest item is going to be weather it was what we were all watching with ax1 and ended up prolonging their stay by a couple of days and same as with launches florida weather's always something you got to work around but the teams will be keeping an eye initial reports looking like we should have some solid chances next week to bring crew 3 home may the 4th be with them that's right i had to i had to nice all right so if you look closely at that shot there you can see dragon yeah now we're zooming in bonus for edger mine and uh once again it is moving quickly so the tracking camera has to reposition every once in a while but yeah very very cool there to see um you know i mean the reality is that we have a couple of hours to go before we complete docking you know we're targeting a docking completion around a quarter to five here pacific so around 4 45 ish time wise so got a little ways to go about a little over an hour but the point being is that dragon is getting closer and closer so the tracking cameras are able to keep zooming back and give us that that perspective shot right now dragon about 1800 meters away and still closing in and we should be coming up on that mid-course burn in about 20 seconds this will be a real short firing just typically a couple of seconds on those draco thrusters to just really fine-tune that approach up until we hit waypoint zero you can contrast that with the approach burn which broke dragon out of that co-elliptic orbit with the station and started to swing it up at that point we were still about seven and a half kilometers behind the space station and that was about a 90-second thruster firing and so this will just be a real quick one we should be hearing that call out any moment now all right so we did get confirmation the mid-course burn has started and then as and then as usual we'll get a call typically from the core up to the crew on that burn performance once again this burn is done about halfway from our starting point of approach initiation to waypoint zero just a small burn to fine tune our approach while you know to ensure that we're still targeting a precise 400 meters directly below the station and at this point we should be hitting waypoint zero in just a little under 20 minutes and dragon still navigating autonomously and should be hearing a call out dragon spacex on the big loop mid-course correction maneuver complete and nominal trajectory converged on waypoint zero all right there you have it good mid-course burn just a little over 19 minutes and change away from our arrival at waypoint zero one other item of note as we were talking about it uh those dragon eyes did get another quick check out shortly after that mid-course burn started teams confirmed both dragon eyes working as expected they had already passed they both passed several of those tests previously we did have a couple of failures on dragon eye one but again teams thoroughly understood it we had the redundancy built in we just did another test and both of those dragonizer checked out and ready for use we only need one of them for the final approach and docking so we've got plenty of redundancy for this final approach at this point there's our first live view of inside dragon freedom with the crew 4 crew this is our first live view since we left them earlier for that media event they are now as you can see in their spacesuits with their visors up they are in their seats buckled in and for the crew they're they're largely just in a monitor mode they have the capability to again send commands to dragon take manual control of the vehicle but on a nominal flight dragon's flight computers are doing all of the flying and it's got just a suite of different navigational tools at its disposal inertial measurement units you've got those dragon eyes literally bouncing lasers off of the space station since we ended the rendezvous mode we're navigating with what's called relative gps so a global positioning system you've got antennas on the space station receivers on dragon that are talking to each other and we've got that c2v2 set up as well that kate was discussing and that's allowing us to send data video communications directly between the dragon the space station and the ground and you're going to hear what's called the big loop discussed a lot up until this point the core here in hawthorne's been talking to the dragon crew on dragon to ground that's that direct communication line and the team in houston talks to the station on space to grounds we have several we have four of those that they can talk across when we get into these integrated operations we tie everybody together everybody hears everything everybody else is saying one big happy family we call it the big loop um and so that's what we'll hear all of our comms on for the remainder of the approach so that view there on the right hand side that camera is positioned between our commander and our pilot so commander chell lindgren is on the left hand side and pilot bob hines is on the right hand side as dan said dragon is fully autonomous it's flying itself at this point which in reality is much safer than humans controlling it you know our computers and our systems are able to take all the inputs evaluate and correct adjust fly essentially much faster and much safer than if there was a steering wheel on dragon per se you can see that the nose cone is open and we can see that forward hatch is exposed that is the hatch that will be utilized to dock autonomously with the space station here in just over an hour and a lot of the instruments that we're using for this approach are in that section that the nose cone covers it's closed during the ascent the flight up to orbit we also close it at the very end of the mission just to provide some additional protection because you have essentially optical equipment things like that that are in the nose cone and so you just want to protect them from all of the stresses of a launch or a re-entry you also have the docking ring as kate was saying that's what's gonna be that attachment point um if you tuned into the launch broadcast jesse and i got to walk people through so that was always really cool uh continuing to do my own astronaut training bit by bit every time we do one of these shows but that that forward hatch has a lot of really critical items built into it it can be open from either side there's an identical crank mechanism both on the inside and the outside of the hatch so that's what they'll operate once we get to hatch opening after we pressurize the vestibule um that hatch also has a pressure equalization valve so they can essentially manually if needed ensure that the pressure between the dragon cabin and the station cabin are the same before we open the hatch that all gets done through a different set of valves but that forward hatch has that additional capability if it's required drag in spacex on the big loop ground has pulled go for approach zero and we will enable the maneuver shortly expected start time is two two four one utc dragon will continue approach through waypoint 1 toward waypoint 2. all right so that's great news so we we talked through some of the waypoints and how we can either stop at them or we can just keep going and the call we just got is we're just going to keep going so they're going to hit waypoint zero just 400 meters below the station and then they're gonna move on to waypoint one now as dan said earlier everything is carefully choreographed the imaginary shapes that we keep talking about around station are important because everything has to be super choreographed all teams both the ones that you see on your screen now they're at mission control center here in hawthorne california that's located just behind dan and i those teams as well as the teams at mission control center at johnson space center in houston texas as well as the teams on station and the team inside the dragon capsule you know these these waypoint check-ins are basically to make sure that everyone is aligned i like to think of it that it's kind of similar to our countdown clock when we're getting ready to launch a rocket that countdown is the thing that syncs up all teams to the same timeline and everybody knows at what step we're about to walk into or where we completed for example you know prop load at t minus 35 minutes we know that's what we're working towards so i like to think these waypoints while the specific times are targeted as dan said before we're running a little early and we're as we just heard we're gonna we're not gonna stop we're just gonna keep going while the times are not necessarily set in stone like things are for the countdown clock of day of launch these are certainly checkpoints and a other type of countdown that all teams use both on ground and in space to align the work that is being done everything literally just have we done this yep check done and i one of the one of the nice things about the rendezvous approach there is no instantaneous docking time so we we have a window essentially where if you run into any kind of an issue you can hang out and solve that issue you don't have to you know scrub and try the next day we saw that during the ax1 approach and they were able to still dock all right here we go so on the left that station looking at dragon on the right that's dragon looking up at station and there's a number of cameras in the the very forward part of dragon one is essentially called the media camera it's just a visible light camera that's not part of the actual navigation system but does provide video and that video can be used by the crew on board the station with some special overlays for their monitoring task and then there's a number of other sensors the dragonite like we talked about using lidar and thermal imaging and then there's also a center line docking camera that's the one that the crew onboard station can get video of routed to essentially laptops just on the station that have a special overlay that helps them gauge dragon's positioning and during its final approach there's the space station and we're coming up just directly underneath it so you're you're looking up at station essentially from dragon and that's just outer space directly behind us and dragon's going to continue to fly straight up at this point for about 10 more minutes until we hit waypoint zero or we're just about 640 meters now away from the station and as i said earlier its speeds are going to start to slow down more and more we're actually closing at less than a meter per second right now so it's again just very a slow methodical approach as dragon makes its way upward once again that's a live view there on the right hand side of commander bob hines on the right and commander chell lindgren on the left i love that view i love being able to see what the astronauts are seeing on their screens what they're using as we mentioned before dragon is autonomous it's flying itself right now but the crew has been trained extensively in order to act as a backup of that system but they are monitoring along with progress and everything that's going on one of those screens actually has a visualization of the dragon capsule and shows which thruster is is ignited at any point in time so there that is the top of dragon that we're seeing the in between the red and the green lights there's a center light that is actually light coming from the interior of the dragon capsule that's a tiny little window there on the forward hatch and if you're wondering why it looks like somebody turned the lights out we are on the dark side of planet earth now we entered into an orbital sunset uh station and dragon right now are orbiting uh just a little over 430 kilometers so about 260 statute miles over the southern atlantic ocean they just swung out over very southern part of south america and are about to swing up to the northeast and pass right over central africa so it's dark right now but again dragon has sensors able to work in light and dark the the visible cameras you can use thermal imaging so they're going to work regardless of your lighting conditions and we're gonna continue to be in sunset or in darkness essentially um for about 30 more minutes we should see that sunrise hit them at about 405 pacific just about 30 minutes before anticipated docking time as we've said before we are taking your questions from social media be sure to tweet at us using the hashtag asknasa we do have one question dan i'm gonna pitch this one to you all right this comes to us from at kristen bragg what will the astronauts be working on in the space station on this mission and how many days will they be on the space station well they'll be working on a lot of different things there's no mission is ever the exact same as the one before it and everyone is just packed with a diverse number of activities primarily they're doing a lot of research so we have research in multiple disciplines everything from developing medicines health technologies things for just us back down here on earth a lot of that coming through the international space station national lab so about 50 of all of the research that we have on the u.s allocation goes to academia to companies that want to do research in microgravity and all of that is focused on benefiting us back here on earth aside from that we do a lot of research on the station for exploration purposes i mean the station is where we've learned how to live in space for extremely long periods of time we just had we just had mark vanderhei come home after 355 days so everything we're going to do when we go out of the moon when you go to mars and you're talking about nine months just to get there you have to learn how to keep people safe healthy you have to develop life support systems food systems everything that goes into a mission that you're going to have to bring with you and you don't want to test it the first time you're on your way to mars you want to test it while you're actually close to home still and we do that all on board the space station and then as far as how long they'll stay we don't have an exact day count as we just saw in the axia mission you have an approximate time that you expect and then launch times weather all of that ends up changing that uh typical space station flights are about six months so we would expect crew fi uh crew five crew four we're on crew four to come home uh in the fall time frame this year yeah now you did mention mark vande high earlier now that 355 days was a new record for a single stay for a nasa astronaut right yeah it was it was he went up there and it wasn't originally intended to be that long uh but once he was up there we were able to essentially extend his stay and mark was fully on board um and that's something that we did pretty famously with scott kelly in his one-year mission that was the first time we had an american stay that long in outer space since then we've had a couple of really long ones we had peggy whitson's a really long mission uh christina cook andrew morgan did extended stays and then mark vanderheide just set the record with 355 days and that's almost a year almost a year in outer space and we we know a tremendous amount about what happens to humans when they spend about six months in space we don't necessarily know as much when you're pushing that out to eight months nine months a year and that's something like i said when we go to mars you're looking at about nine months one way and so you really have to have a good handle on what else does the human body do when it's in microgravity that long and how can we keep our people healthy yeah it's pretty incredible to to be able to facilitate that exploration and that learning through these operational crew missions these long duration missions to the international space station um now we we are for those of you that have just joined us the crew launched earlier today uh just after midnight here and um just after midnight for those of us here on the west coast um and the uh the crew is now in the dragon capsule that you see on your screen they are in their seats buckled in connected to their seats themselves in their spacesuits they have not closed the visors for pressurization we did do the pressurization for the the leak check earlier got a good leak check and that was really the the beginning of this approach that we are currently undergoing we are expecting to make contact with the space station around 4 30-ish pacific time so that is just under an hour from now we might be running a little bit early because as dan mentioned before we heard the call out that we're just we're just going to cruise right on through waypoint zero and possibly waypoint one so um we are are uh underway with that now yep and we're just about two minutes away from waypoint zero so that'll be our first waypoint in the approach um and we'll be just 400 meters below station um and i don't know if we can slip it in but i did see we got another social question this is one that comes up a lot what are the red and the green lights why does it look like it's christmas in space right now uh and those are just lights to help tell the observers on the station and those on the ground which side of dragon those just essentially signify which sides for which side starboard uh for the dragon spacecraft and that's done so when we're in darkness you just have better spatial awareness of what part of dragon you're looking at for sure also important to note other vessels do the same thing airplanes also utilize red and green lights to indicate which again which is port much of starboard as well as ships so um basically it's important to know which side is which uh especially right now as we are approaching the space station and as as we can see as dan said earlier the lights are off so it's helpful to understand the orientation um now the sensors on dragon those dragon eyes they don't need the lights on in order to do their job we are using lidar and thermal imaging to track the station and make this very controlled and slow approach to station basically those dragon eyes excuse me are locked into a specific spot with the space station that docking area and is making a slow approach and yeah we can see that that center white light as i mentioned before that's actually a tiny little window on the on the forward hatch that's actually the interior lights inside dragon freedom we should be coming up on waypoint zero in about 20 seconds and as we heard the call up to the crew we're not going to be stopping here we're just going to continue on through waypoint zero and then we should also be continuing through waypoint one um so we're gonna wait for the call out for waypoint zero and we can see those draco thrusters around the service section firing that's pretty spectacular i love that and so 8.0 has been passed dragons now inside 400 meters away from the space station and it's moving up to what's known as waypoint one and so we can see those thrusters firing dragon is essentially doing a flip over to the top side of the station so it's moving from 400 meters directly below to an area just 220 meters directly above and once it gets there it'll be on what we call the docking axis so it'll be lined up directly with the docking port on the space-facing side of note 2 the harmony module just about 220 meters away and we'll we have the go to then move through waypoint one and move to waypoint two which will move us inside of that keep out sphere this is a great illustration of what we're doing so waypoint zeros at the bottom dragon's following that line out in front and over to the top part of station where it'll pause just momentarily at waypoint one 220 meters away and then it'll start to drive straight down towards waypoint two and that'll put it just 20 meters away we'll essentially always hold at waypoint two that's where the teams do their final go no go for final approach and docking and so dragon will just be positioned just 20 meters away it'll then start to push in again moving at a pretty glacial rate of less than a tenth of a meter per second until we get to that initial contact and capture dragon spacex on the big loop approach zero is in progress trajectory has converged on waypoint one we predict waypoint one arrival at approximately two three two one utc so the call up to the crew letting them know we've moved through waypoint zero trajectories converge so we're locked on to waypoint one that space or that point just 220 meters directly above the space station we expect to be there in about 37 and a half minutes so we'll continue to see dragon just slowly make its way again out in front of the station and then flying up directly overhead dan you mentioned earlier that we're going to be in the dark for a while um do you know how much time we have left i'm asking selfishly because i really want to see those thrusters fire again in the dark that was such an awesome view to be able to see those draco thrusters as they were powering through waypoint zero yeah we've got about 22 minutes left in the dark so we'll be in an orbital daytime by the time we hit waypoint zero um we should see a couple more thruster firings as it as it makes it is again we're kind of doing a loop we're staying outside the keep out sphere and swinging up and around in front and this is the view from dragon looking at the space station you could see uh several of the large radiators on the space station and now we're back inside with the crew and a couple of the items that they're looking at so on the far left that is essentially the center line camera so that is the view that they have to monitor their approach to the space station that's also the screen that shell lingering is the commander or bob hines the pilot could use to manually fly the vehicle if necessary and then that screen in the middle is just showing them their trajectory i think i just saw another firing or we're getting some lighting artifacts it looks like yeah so i'll point out we were just talking about the red and green lights i as i mentioned before that center white light not the blinking one the one that stays on that is a tiny window on the forward hatch and then the two lights that are on the right hand side those are actually dragon's windows so the side hatch is located in between those two side white lights safe to say that if i were in a dragon capsule in space my face would be plastered up against the window the whole time i mean the core would have to yell at me to get back in my seat uh that's where i would be yeah unfortunately they're they're seated the whole time for this approach but uh we did do a fly around on the i believe it was the crew 2 departure uh where some of the crew were able to get out of their seats and take photos of the space station as dragon just executed a loop around it so that you know had to have been a pretty spectacular job for them to do right before they came home but so in this view we're looking we're looking up at the space station those kind of ruffled items you can see those are some of the large radiators that we use to reject heat generated by all the different electronics and systems onboard the space station that screen in the middle is showing the crew their trajectory so their flight their relative position around the space station uh the station itself is in the center of that kind of cross in the top right of that screen and then you can see the circle around it that's just indicative of the keep out sphere and then you'll see that triangle part that is what's called the approach corridor and that's just essentially the imaginary shape that they're wanting to stay in during that final approach and they're able to monitor that on dragon they're able to monitor that down here on the ground in mccx and tom marshburn and the crew onboard the station have that essentially that same overlay and able to track from onboard the space station now this is a cool juxtaposition of views because they're looking at each other right now so on the left of course is that dragon capsule as it keeps moving and on the right hand side was the station so that view of station is coming from that point on dragon that we can see as we've mentioned before dragon is completely autonomous it's flying itself uh and the the crew on board are monitoring they're standing by um they have been trained extensively in order to be able to take over if necessary they're basically the primary backup to the system but everything is continuing along nominally as we've said before we actually instead of stopping at way point zero everything looked good so we just kind of cruised on through and we'll probably be able to do that with waypoint one um so we're just like we said this this was already shaping up to be the fastest trip from uh from launch to docking uh and dragon is just continuing to make that even shorter so our initial target docking time was about 8 15 over on the east coast and that's moved up almost an hour our docking time right now we should be less than an hour away the current target was about 440 pacific which is about 1140 gmt and dragon's flight computer again making those adjustments in real time as it gathers all of the different relative navigation data from dragon eye and the different sensors on board and just continuing to fine-tune its path and update in real time but as kate said everything's going really smooth so far with this approach we no impediments to docking that we're tracking and we're just standing by until we hit waypoint one we should be there in about 30 minutes a little over 31 minutes from now at which point they'll be directly above the space station yeah as we said before this movement from waypoint zero to waypoint one essentially swings dragon up and out in front of the space station at which point it'll reach about 220 meters away from station um it's at that point in time it'll be on what is referred to as the docking access which essentially means it's directly in front of the docking port that it is targeting to dock at as we said once once dragon docks it's going to be a pretty full house on station for a little less than a week we'll have two dragon vehicles uh doc the one that's now delivering crew 4 and the one that delivered crew 3 back in november of last year so both of our international docking ports will be taken up we've got one soyuz spacecraft that's currently docked the russian node module along with two uncrewed progress and that cygnus that we saw that's currently birthed as we mentioned throughout the webcast we're taking your your questions from social media using the hashtag asknasa we have a new one coming in which is pretty on point for what you were just talking about dan so i'm going to throw this one to you this comes to us from at tlpn underscore official the launch pad the question is how many bedrooms are there on station where will the extra crew be sleeping yeah right now we have let me do the math in my head we have seven bedrooms essentially on board the station we have two in the russian segment uh four in node two and then one in the european the columbus we call it the casa i forget what the acronym is but i feel like that was another one they made up the acronym and then filled it in um so we've only got seven and they're called crew quarters they're essentially the size of a small closet and that's your private space to yourself when you're living on board the space station and so we're going to have 11 people on board for a short time and so we do what we call camp out positions where they just set up temporary sleep areas where you can basically affix your sleeping bag to the wall uh typically there's microgravity right so it's not like you have to lay out a bed or anything you just keep on the wall floor everything's at bed essentially we'll typically have one crew member stay inside the dragon spacecraft so i anticipate one of the crew members from uh either crew 3 or crew 4 will be sleeping in a dragon i will usually put one inside the quest airlock as that's when we're not actively doing spacewalks that's one of the lowest traffic areas and then we'll just typically find us another space either in the japanese module kibo or also inside columbus where we can have them set up shop for a couple of days that's pretty intriguing to see how you know space is rearranged flexed depending on the number of visitors and i always i always love seeing photos from uh the lucky individuals that get to sleep inside dragon because again microgravity uh you know inside the capsule it it is a little congested in terms of you have the seats there but you can actually remove the foot bar so like the foot rest itself and it creates a lot of extra space and you know you just velcro yourself to something and and you're comfortable again we've got another one i i like this question uh so this one came in from jordan t wanted to know what's the usual cabin temp or pr and pressure for dragon and the space station and so uh it's a cabin temps adjustable uh based off the crew preference uh we actually a little while after launch we heard and it's it's unusual because the crew can't always just adjust the thermostat on their own either on dragon or on the space station it's actually somebody on the ground um who has to control that for station it's our ethos console that oversees all of our life support and it's one of our cis positions in hawthorne but they'll keep it usually in around the 70s system correct usually in the 70s again it's it's total crew preference um but they can control the temperature and the relative humidity on board in terms of pressure it's right at around where we are at sea level so about 14.7 psi it's usually a little bit less than that but we keep it at that pressure just so you're not in a drastically different pressure when you're on station than when you are here on earth and so we can maintain that pressurized environment it might be off by a little bit like a couple of decimal points of psi between the two spacecraft after they dock and that's why we do that equalization so by the time we open up the hatch pressure is essentially the same on either side hatch just comes right open and you don't have to fight against any extra air pressure or anything like that yeah now another form of temperature control that we utilize is actually in the spacesuits themselves so while the astronauts are in their suits and and they have their umbilicals plugged into their seats inside dragon we actually flow a little bit of nitrox or nitrogen oxygen which is an air mixture same as what you use whenever you go scuba diving and so totally fine to breathe and it's also what is flow through the suit whenever their visor is closed and in that locked position during dynamic events inside the capsule but that cool air is essentially flowing through the suit at all times so while the cabin temperature is adjustable so is the temperature inside the suit which you know i could imagine that going to space would be pretty exciting um you know sweat might happen and having that that cold not cold that cooler air flowing through the suit helps keep everybody comfortable and not smelly all right we'll get video back a little bit we're still about 25 minutes away from waypoint one we've got another question this from from at lou angeles do the sleeping quarters have windows great question unfortunately no for most of them the dragon ones do yeah the dragon does uh dragon's got those windows so when you're staying in dragon uh you've got a window to look out uh and then our sleeping quarters in the russian segment have a window but all the ones in the u.s side unfortunately do not i can imagine that could be a little bit harder to sleep with because again you're you're traveling at about 17 000 miles an hour you're seeing sunrises and sunsets so unless you've got some really heavy blackout curtains you're gonna get a blast of sunlight every 45 minutes yep we actually do have um it is a window cover that we put inside the dragon capsule for that exact reason so that you're not getting um a fake sunrise every 45 minutes now we have we have covers that we put on the windows in order to to prevent that sunlight intrusion all right and we're back with that video connection this review from dragon looking up at the station right now dragon just about 450 meters away still starting to close in we're continuing to fly up and around until we hit waypoint one expected to be there in about 23 minutes if you look at that center screen you can see again just kind of relative to where the station we are we're about halfway through this maneuver so we're going to continue to swing up and you can see the two different approach corridors now on that center screen so i'm center screen the right side uh there's two triangular shapes one shooting straight up one shooting straight to the left and those are that's what's called the approach corridor that's just the space that we're looking for dragon to stay inside during that final approach and we're going to the zenith port so the space facing one um so we're going to be flying through that one that was pointing straight up and we'll be just in front of that in a little under 23 minutes from now and then we should be moving past waypoint one and then right onto waypoint two so all right so we're just about 21 minutes away from our arrival at waypoint one so if you're just tuning in we're already well into our kind of final rendezvous steps uh we passed waypoint zero which was just 400 meters below the station and dragon right now is executing a maneuver that's swinging it out in front and over top until we're directly in front of that docking port on the space facing side of the harmony module so we've got about 20 minutes until we get there the teams here in hawthorne monitoring the crew on board dragon monitoring we're looking over their shoulders right now and the teams out in mission control houston also standing by as we're well into our integrated operations let's do a quick check in with everybody over there shaniqua give us an update how's the team and mission control houston doing how's the crew doing as we get through this final approach yeah thanks dan um so far uh this afternoon the crew on the station is doing good and so is the flight directors and the flight controllers in housto uh mission control houston currently crew woke up on station around 3 30 pm central time after a nap period and began begin preparations for crew 4's arrival this included as you discussed earlier some casas or some temporary living quarters for the additional crew members and setting up that special software in the station's cupola to track dragon's approach and docking nasa astronaut and current station commander tom marshburn will be the prime be prime for monitoring and making sure dragon freedom stays in the expected zones once dragon is docked it will join five parked um vehicles at the international space station including spacex dragon endurance which was which is what brought up crew 3 astronauts back in november the northrop portman cygnus space freighter the russians and russia's soyuz ms-21 cruise ship and progress 79 and 80 resupply ships again after docked marshmallow will also be primed to start hatch opening operations he'll start by opening the large hatch on the node 2 zenith port giving him access to the pressurized mating adapter the crew will then have to pressurize the vestibule which is that small space between the hatches on the dragon and the space station this was previously exposed to vacuum prior to docking so the crew will need to fill it with air and make sure its pressure is nearly equal to that of the atmospheric pressure on the dragon and the station again dan mentioned 14.7 psi marshburn will also allow will have us release a small valve on the station's hatch to slowly introduce the air on the station's festival and flight controllers here in mission control houston will monitor and verify the pressure readings to make sure everything is leak free before we get ready to open up the hatches currently nasa flight director adi boulos is leading the team here in mission control houston for dragon's approach and docking right next to him is the capcom alex kanellinkos who will be communicating with the crew aboard the station right now there are currently seven astronauts and cosmonauts living and working on the international space station including nasa's kayla baron raja chari tom marshburn european space agency astronaut matthias maurer and ross cosmos cosmonauts sergey korsakoff olek artemyev and denise matveyef crew 4 joining will bring the crew compliment to 11. again we're very excited to get the crew aboard and that's it dan we're looking good over here in mission control houston back over to you guys in hawthorne all right thanks so much shaniqua and for everybody just now tuning in across nasa social media accounts welcome we got this view just for you this is a look at the international space station from the dragon spacecraft freedom as it's in the final stages of its approach we've essentially moved out directly in front of the space station right now so we're looking uh right at a docking port on the no two forward where another dragon is currently docked we're gonna continue up about 90 degrees until dragons directly over top of the station just 220 meters away from its docking port and at that point we'll be at what's known as waypoint one pretty soon the teams are gonna do just a final go no go to proceed past waypoint one and on to waypoint two at which point we'll stop just 20 meters away from the space station's docking port do a final check on dragon systems spacex on dragon to ground no status update to report just checking in vehicle continues to look healthy as we swing around to waypoint one we're getting a look at the the core jake vendel who's just over our shoulder here in mccx and right on cue here comes the sun we're now entering into that orbital daytime if you uh look closely there you can see the various draco thrusters firing there's a total of 16 of them on board dragon 12 of them are located around the body or the base of dragon and then there are four located around the forward hash those are the forward draco thrusters since dragon is approaching the space station uh whenever you see those uh those forward thrusters uh fire it's basically you know course correcting almost like slowing dragon down but it looks like we're primarily utilizing the bulkhead thrusters maybe not the bulk of the bulkhead the um the side thrusters yeah we'll be using those service sections for because we're doing what's essentially a translational maneuver so in in your orbital mechanics that's moving side to side up down and then we'll use the we've used those forward bulkheads for all of our kind of pushing for us as we as we were chasing down the space station so as we're in the sunrise lighting conditions are perfect to see some of those thruster firings you're saying it is dragon just autonomously fine tunes its path right up until we hit waypoint one in a little under 14 minutes from now the propellants that we use on dragon are actually loaded onto dragon several days a couple weeks actually prior to launch itself we do all of that uh prop loading over at a place called area 59 or dragon land um which is um at kennedy and uh those propellants are are monomethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide and they combust instantaneously when they meet each other so there's basically you know two different types of holding tanks for that those propellants and then whenever dragon quickly flows those propellants into the combustion chamber of the draco engines because of their properties they boom fire as soon as they touch this is different than how we make fire on falcon 9 for example in that case with the liquid oxygen and the rocket-grade kerosene the rp-1 those two propellants do not ignite when they touch you actually need an ignition source so for that we use t-teb but in space we don't want to you know use an ignition source um this version where we use what are called hypergolic fuels or excuse me hypergolic propellants um is safer for space and they and they it's much faster of a of a of a reaction and as you can see with these tiny bursts uh from various directions we need dragon to be to be quick we need those thrusters to um you know they're really more like impulses uh more so than you know just flat out burns yeah those those hyper goals come with the additional benefit of not requiring not requiring what's called cryogenic storage so uh as you see falcon 9 fuel we're using that ultra densified locks and to keep fuels super cold takes a lot of energy a lot of power and you can do that when you have an entire ground support system maintaining a cryogenic fuel inside a small space like a spacecraft not really feasible which is why you'll it's extremely common to see these hypergolic fuels used for onboard thrusters we use the exact same mix in the european service module for the orion spacecraft and in fact almost the opposite of the falcon 9 fuels we actually have heaters that we have on the tanks for those hyperbolic fuels just to as you can store them much closer to almost a room temperature which is one of their real real draws for use in addition to the simplicity that kate talked about where you don't need that extra ignition source so we're still swinging around we're just about 10 and a half minutes away from our uh our waypoint number one which will put dragon just 220 meters above the space station it'll still be outside of what's known as the keep out sphere that's our second imaginary shape around the space station that just helps to govern the really the rules for approaching spacecraft before you're in the keep out sphere you have to be on what's essentially a four orbit or about a six hour free safe trajectory where we completely lost control of dragon it wouldn't move inside of that sphere uh which is about 200 meters in radius around the station and so what you're looking at this is the maneuver we're on right now we're a little more than halfway up that uh kind of half circle line that you see on the left as we've moved from waypoint zero and moving on up to waypoint one so we've already moved out directly in front we're now moving directly over the docking port on node 2 where dragon freedom is headed today so the the joint the integrated teams uh here at mcc accent over in houston are doing joint polls it's one of everybody's favorite things in space flight is go no goes and so they do these joint polls and we're just constantly assessing not only making sure dragon's ready but all the systems on board station are ready we do a couple of configurations to the station to get ready for the docking we do what's called feathering just a special orientation of the solar arrays to help give them additional protection from any plumes or just those thruster firings those can leave a residue if you don't and that's any spacecraft that's flying and so we always orient the solar arrays we also are going to be changing up how we uh do the attitude control on station during this final approach typically we're using the large gyroscopes on the u.s section just for nominal attitude control and then when we get into the actual final approach and docking we hand over that control to the thrusters on the russian segment who can provide a much more kind of fine-tuned propulsive attitude control for that final approach and just checking in we're about seven minutes 40 seconds away from the arrival at waypoint one dragon at a range of about 320 meters at this point dragon using a couple of different navigational tools to to make its approach autonomously and we're seven minutes away from waypoint one and again as everything continues to look good on dragon freedom thrusters performing nominally we've got all the navigational tools that we need for final approach we'll be able to move in from waypoint one down to waypoint number two just 20 meters away from station and then we will stop at waypoint 2 and the teams will do just a final check-in and they'll give the go for final approach and then after final approach is complete again we'll be moving at a pretty slow pace we'll get that initial contact dragon using the soft capture system to interlock with the international docking adapter then that soft capturing will start to retract bring the spacecraft in and then we get ready for what's called the hard mate where we drive 12 hooks that will securely hold dragon to the docking port six of those hooks have actually already been used on this flight they hold down the docking or the nose cone during the ascent portion and then those are one of the first real checkouts or one of the first real operations after dragon separates from falcon 9 is to open those hooks and get the nose cone open revealing all of our navigation tools in those forward bulkhead thrusters oh as dragon we just started to move out of view there we got another view here we can see that it is slowly but surely making its approach to the international space station once again this is the crew 4 crew a long duration mission to the international space station they launched earlier today actually just this morning we had liftoff at 12 52 a.m pacific time and everything was super go for our conditions you know as we talked about before weather is always a determining factor and whether or not we get to go to space and while weather at the cape was a little challenging throughout the week um we were able to get the crew four crew out with uh you know really gorgeous conditions uh for a nighttime launch and uh everything has been going really well very smoothly the crew had a sleep period you know just a scheduled period where they had to go to sleep in preparation for docking activities which we are you know coming up to they've had two meals at this point and as of right now they are buckled into their seats uh with their spacesuits on and they are monitoring the approach of dragon capsule to the international space station dragon is fully autonomous so it is flying itself right now the crew acts as a backup to the system essentially but dragon is doing all the calculations in real time taking all the data coming in from the station from mission control center here in hawthorne from mission control center in houston all of these inputs analyzing them in real time and making those course corrections which we just saw there that's what happens whenever we we see those draco thrusters firing and that's essentially just dragon steering itself to the next location that it has to go to which in this case is waypoint one we should be just about three minutes away from there so after that we'll just be about 220 meters right now we're 250 meters away so even as it's making this kind of swing up and around it's moved in a little bit closer that 400 meter range and we're down at waypoint zero and then things do pick up after we get to to waypoint one we we move in about 200 more meters until we hit waypoint two stopping just about 20 meters 60 feet or so the docking port and then we wait for that final go for approach and docking then after they get docked there's a flurry of activity that happens both inside dragon and on the station side uh on board dragon they'll get to go to dog for get out of their suits and they set them up to dry essentially uh attaching the fan base on the big loop approach 1 and soft capture ring extension will begin shortly dragon will continue approach to waypoint 2. the core here in hawthorne jake vendel vendel giving the crew dragon freedom astronauts a heads up that we're gonna just proceed right past waypoint one which will hit in under a minute and a half from now and move directly in towards waypoint two and that soft capture ring is gonna extend out from the docking mechanism on dragon that's what's going to make that initial contact it's essentially three large metal pedal like structures that are going to interlock with the international docking adapter and after they make that initial contact it'll retract bring dragon in close essentially right up until forming a perfect seal and then we can enable those hard capture rings 12 in total to securely attach dragon to station 45 seconds until arrival at waypoint one and we'll get an updated time after we get through waypoint one but we should be just about 20 minutes away from docking [Music] you can see lots of draco thruster firings there and we're just about to waypoint one and we got confirmation so we're through waypoint one and we're moving on now to waypoint two and these are primarily the service section uh draco thrusters that are firing essentially meaning they are located on the signs of dragon as opposed to the forward draco thrusters which are located at the top of dragon under the nose cone and around the around the hatch uh now um you know with waypoint one complete uh initial contact station spacex on the big loop expect reconfiguration of the c2v2 link shortly station copies all right so that initial contact between dragon and the international space station uh is expected in about 30 minutes now before before reaching waypoint one mission op mission operators conducted a go no-go poll station on the big loop station is ready for docking all right we just heard uh tom marshburn on board the space station they're ready all right good news there um so conducted a poll to allow dragon to begin that approach to waypoint two uh which is located inside that keep out sphere which is about 20 meters away from the space station so we keep talking about these invisible shapes they're all intended uh primarily for safety of the crew both on board dragon and on board station yeah and we we do this with every vehicle crew and cargo um where we just have these checkpoints built in and you you put it beautifully earlier it's very similar to a countdown for launch where we have these times we have these moments built in to make sure all the different teams are in sync because we're constantly not just making sure that everything's looking good on dragon but also that all the systems on board the space station are ready to go that's why we're in what we call these integrated operations and as i've said a couple of times we're gonna be doing it slow and steady at this point um right now we're just about 170 meters away from the station we're gonna get to waypoint two and pause and then we're gonna wait for that final go no go the latest docking time we're looking at right now is about 18 minutes from now so it should be coming at around 4 42 p.m pacific time we'll get an exact docking time when it happens but we are still moving ahead of schedule um we're still about 40 minutes ahead of when we thought we were gonna dock and this was already one of the fastest or if not the fastest docking we've done on the crew dragon so far we're just continuing to stay ahead of schedule yeah for sure now at that 20 meter distance from the station's docking adapter dragon's approach will slow and it'll begin to align itself with the adapter to come in for the final approach yeah and we heard the soft capture ring is being extended so that's just moving out a little bit from that very top part of dragon underneath the nose cone and it'll make that initial soft capture uh essentially using those metal pedals to interlock with the international docking adapter and after that contact is bait the ring on dragon will retract bring dragon in a little bit closer and then we can start the hard capture sequence um and so dragon soft capturing has a bunch of dampers in the rotary springs and that just lessens the force as it brings it in a little bit closer and we make that initial contact with the station and after that we can engage those hooks and have a hard mate and then get ready to go through hatchops i whenever i'm explaining the process to to younger people i often like to reference the movie interstellar because there's a couple scenes in there where the spacecraft is docking to that space station and there's like this great visual of the hooks locking in and while the design is certainly different for uh this space station and for dragon that that is what we're talking about when when we refer to as hooks really locking in uh to the dragon capsule for that for that hard capture all right so we're just about six and a half minutes away from our arrival at waypoint two so at this point dragons pointed straight at the docking port right now again this docking port is on the top part of the space station dragons looking straight down at the space station uh and when we if we are lucky enough to get a couple more views from dragon uh we'll be looking directly down at planet earth uh behind the station as well uh and it's gonna continue to move into waypoint two we're gonna pause just 20 minutes away we expect that to happen in about a little under six minutes from now and then we get that final go no go for it today that final go no go for docking after which uh the uh team on the ground here in hawthorne sends a command and dragon begins its final approach yeah and we should note that while the other pause points were able to be skipped essentially that is one that is not skipped because of that go no go uh that final go no-go point um yeah so waypoint 2 is up next uh and again that puts dragon only 20 meters away from the space station from there the spacecraft will focus on station houston on the big loop station crew dragon is transmitting docking camera video please confirm video and data updating in dragon docking monitor basically just asking the crew can you see the live camera pace you can confirm video and data and the dragon docking monster houston copies awesome so there's a shot there of mission control center here at hawthorne california on the left-hand side and then of course mission control center at johnson space center in houston on the right-hand side drag in spacex on the big loop we see the onboard for rgps no immediate concerns dragon is navigating on dragonite and so that call up right there so our gps is the relative gps system again that's one of several navigational tools dragon has basically gps sensors on dragon talking to those on station that's used for a lot of the approach when we're still quite a ways out still but as you just heard the crew told dragon eyes are those primary tools that we're using now spacex on the big loop c2v2 link reconfiguration and soft capture ring ring extension complete with the rgps one failure we are still go for docking and so again just that quick update to the crew still go for docking we're using the dragon eye there's two on-board dragon we're using one with another one for redundancy for that final approach dragon eye using lidar essentially bouncing lasers off of reflectors on the space station also using a thermal imager to get range range on the big loop ground teams have pulled go for approach two upon confirmation of crew readiness we will enable the approach and there's a good call so the teams down here on the ground have pulled the dragons healthy and in a good config station's healthy and a good config and so we'll pause when we get to 20 meters and then as soon as the crew on dragon tells us that they're ready team here in hawthorne will send the command and we'll be in with final approach yeah so just a good example there of really as you mentioned before these are integrated operations right it is mission control there that you see on there on your screen located here uh just behind dan and i uh at spacex headquarters that mission control center from johnson space center and you know the crew on board station and the crew on board dragon and as you just said you know just checking in with the the crew on dragon hey you ready to ready to do this um and get the the final go from them we also heard the crew on station is getting video from dragon and they have a number of displays that they're able to see that video with overlays making sure again they're inside the docking corridor and things like that if you followed the ax1 docking that hung us up at waypoint 2 for a little while as we had an issue on station getting that video routed not an issue at all today and with these missions um with a nasa crew on board dragon they're actually prime in the kind of in the command tree for that final approach monitor [Music] or down the line all right so commander chell lingard just reporting the crews close their visors they're locked in we're just about a minute and a half away from arrival at waypoint two yeah so essentially that means that dragon spacex on the big loop we copied your last visors down we just enabled the approach as a final reminder once dragon is inside the crew hands-off point retreat and breakout are not permitted station houston on the big loop dragon is continuing approach and is go for docking monitor for steps five and six in procedure one decimal 102 dragon approach and retreat monitoring mission copies we're monitoring in steps five and six at this time all right that crew hands-off point that we heard mentioned essentially means that um dragon is the one that has to initiate uh that docking abort the the crew is uh not the one to do that um again this is dragon just driving itself autonomously it's taking all the data coming in from station from houston from hawthorne and making those precise calculations as well as utilizing those dragon eyes that are on board that lidar which is just using lasers and uh and the thermal imaging really to to make that final approach and that precise docking uh there you can see a view of mission control center here in hawthorne uh these uh you know right behind dan and i um the crew we heard before their visors are down meaning that their their suits are now also their primary breathing device so the the spacesuit acts as an extension of the capsule itself the crews have their spacesuits on their visors down and in the locked position but they are plugged in using an umbilical to their seat which provides telemetry and communications and air so right now we are flowing nitrox which is nitrogen oxygen mixture uh through the suits and not only does it allow them to breathe but it also keeps them cool so it's a cool nitrox mixture and really ultimately just intended to keep them comfortable uh and obviously safe and so at this point we've moved past waypoint two and we heard a bunch of the comms up to that crew so we were given the final go for docking and so right now we should just be about four minutes away or so and we don't have video at the moment uh we're we're in kind of a period where we're waiting to reacquire contact with our tdrs our tracking data and relay satellites to get that live video back we should get it back within the next two minutes or so so we should have those views of docking we promise we're not just showing you us because we want to as soon as we get views of that dragon again for that final approach we'll be bringing it to you we should be just about three and a half minutes a little bit more from docking um as you heard we're gonna hear a call out for crew hands off point they'll just call up chop and that as kate said that just telling the crew they are not to send any commands to abort at that point any abort commands will come automatically from dragon's flight computer so we're in our final approach we're just about 15 meters away from the space station should be docking and just about three minutes from now so we've continued to get further and further ahead on our timeline i think we were looking at about a 5 15 pm pacific docking now we're we're looking to do that almost 45 minutes early yeah which is great um you know the crew lifted off from kennedy space center pad 39a at 12 52 a.m this morning um and so it's been a pretty busy day for them uh as i've said before they did go through a sleep phase which um you know was eight hours where they had the ability or rather the time to sleep whether or not they were able to get to sleep i hope so um but there's about an hour before that crew sleep period called pre-sleep and then there's about an hour after the sleep period called post sleep and it's you know just an opportunity for them to wind down but then also wind back up in preparation for you know all the activities that we've had today and still have upcoming um as dan said we're just a couple minutes spacex copies 10 meters we are less than 10 meters away so just about two minutes from docking and so we'll might be right on the edge of getting that video signal back but uh the teams and we're still getting telemetry so we'll be able to know when that docking has occurred and hopefully we'll get our kind of our high data rate communication back soon and be able to bring that live video but they're they're closing in we're just eight meters away now about a minute and a half from docking we'll hear that call out for chop come about 20 to 30 seconds before that initial contact which again is that soft capture ring on dragon's docking mechanism interfacing with the international docking adapter onboard the space station we're driving in towards the zenith port the space facing port on node two and we've got just six meters to go again dragon is driving itself at this point in time so hopefully when we get our views back we'll be able to show you and there we just heard that copies five meters five meters away from that soft uh that initial contact point we're under a minute away from docking all right coming up on three meters and closing two and a half meters away docking about 30 seconds copy 2 meters one meter in closing and we heard confirmation dragon spacex on the big loop contact and soft capture complete attenuation in progress and confirmation soft capture and docking confirmed that time 4 37 p.m pacific 11 37 gmt with the international space station flying 261 statute miles over the central pacific ocean and there we got it that's a gorgeous view now of course there are still a few steps that we have to complete before dragon is securely attached to station dragon spacex on the big loop soft capture ring retraction is in progress there's our first full view of dragon dragon freedom attached to the international space station up next we are going to begin the hard capture sequence that's essentially when we are engaging the hooks around the docking mechanism well unfortunately we did have that video cut out right at that moment of docking but it's great to see it attached now again that initial contact that docking time 4 37 p.m pacific 1137 gmt the dragon and station flying 261 miles over the central part of the pacific ocean and we heard the the retraction of the docking ring is underway so slowly see dragon inch a little bit closer to the docking adapter and then we can kick off that hard capture sequence all told it'll take about 10 minutes for everything to finish after we've excuse me completed that that initial soft capture i will get those 12 docking hooks engaged basically doing them two two sets one set of six at a time after which we'll have hard mate and then all of the postdocking configs can get put into work including umbilicals and then the crews starting to step through all of their post docking crew onboard dragon getting out of their suits and the crew on board station getting ready to go through the hatch operations so with this view here we are able to see those draco thrusters that we saw in action quite a bit throughout the approach maneuvers uh those uh well the dragon capsule to me is upside down but for the orientation that it's in right there kind of in the center uh of the pressurized section that that shiny bright white area we see three ports that are kind of like ovals there are four clusters with three ports all around the the base or the service structure of dragon and those are those service structured draco thrusters that we utilize for that precise maneuvering as the dragon approaches the international space station i believe you can also identify uh that green light that we were talking about so there's a green one and a red one indicating what side is port which side is starboard starboard start starboard don't ask me which one is which i don't like deep water so i'm not really ever to to be on a boat but um yeah the the green light there you can see uh on the left hand side of dragon yeah thanks to a quick refresher ports the left side starboard to the right side dragon spacex on the big loop ring retraction complete docking sequence is holding for mcs reconfiguration okay so the soft capture ring has drawn in now before we start to engage those hooks we're going to do another reconfig of the mcs that's the motion control system onboard station during the approach and initial contact we're under all of our attitude controls being done by thrusters on the russian segment we do that with any approaching visiting vehicle now the docking has occurred we're going to hand over control back to the u.s gyroscopes which do our nominal or just our normal day-to-day attitude control and so that puts station in a much more kind of quiescent it won't be able to make any rapid adjustments which could interfere with the driving of those hooks so as soon as the station teams have confirmed that we've handed over attitude control over to the us system they'll be able to start driving in those 12 hooks to secure dragon in place fun little fact station houston on the big loop mcs configured proceeding with hook driving we were talking about uh the red light and the green light john insbrucker just sent me an im and the you know he's a very wisdom filled person uh he says port has four letters as does left and i will never forget which side is port now so thanks john i once again we can see that dragon freedom has made initial contact there with the international space station just a gorgeous view there and again we've we've had confirmation that soft capture rings retracted again just standing by we heard that the mcs handover the motion control system on stations occurred and now it's going to be a time for the those hard capture rings to start engaging again there's 12 of them total the first six have started to drive uh they're they're done in two gangs of six each um these are this is the second time in this dragon flight that we've done something with these hooks uh they six of these are engaged during the ascent the launch and ascent portion holding the nose cone in place which you can see is open and swung out to the right there of the the international docking adapter those drive open and release the nose cone shortly after dragon gets on orbit and now six of those driving to do our initial gang of hooks to start that hard mate process and then once they're in place the second six will drive and we'll have a hard mate hard mate of dragon to the space station for those of you that might be wondering excuse me what the half black and half white part of dragon is that is the unpressurized section known as the trunk the side that is black that's actually covered in solar panels so that is what the dragon capsule utilizes while on orbit and you know making its way to the space station essentially to provide power generate power so we only have them on one side of the trunk and the other side of the trunk is just painted white you can just sorry i was just going to say you can just barely make out the the heat shield there at the bottom of the pressurized section just above the unpressurized section so yeah and we just heard that the first set of six hooks have engaged and so now the second are driving once again this is the hard capture which is basically the final capture of the dragon spacecraft to the international space station so once that second set of hooks are driving we'll get confirmation of a hard mate and then uh we we jump right into the hatch operations and the the crew on board dragon will get the go to get out of their seats out of their suits and start getting uh be free to move about the cabin essentially and start getting ready to to open up the hatches they'll hook their suits up to fans to dry them out before they get stowed and then they'll have a couple of different tasks to do after we get the hatches open in dragon to just get it ready for that docked operations and a lot of it's focused on the atmospheric control on board dragon they're going to be removing what's called a lyo canister a lithium hydroxide canister that is used to scrub co2 from the dragon cabin during free flight they'll remove that and seal it as we're going to be essentially integrating dragon's cabin with the rest of the space station and so not only will dragon be able to use station power station data and communications but will flow uh air from the station stack into dragon and integrate it with all of its life support systems generating oxygen scrubbing carbon dioxide while it's intact while it's attached and we are hearing that the second set of hooks are closed and we'll stand by dragon spacex on the big loop 12 good hooks hard capture complete ah on your screen there on your screen is spacex core crew operations and resources engineer jake vendel the corps acts as the primary communication point um from the mission control center here in hawthorne to the crew on board dragon all right so now that dragon has completed the docking sequence uh the spacecraft must undergo a handful of checks before we will be able to open the hatch the crew on board dragon will now get a chance to get out of their suits before moving into hatch operations that's right and things are going to be picking up on station two uh nasa nasa's tom marshburn is going to be the lead for all of the the hatch operations on the station side uh first he's gonna have to open up a hatch to gain access to the uh the pressurized mating adapter and the docking adapter uh and then he's gonna start uh pressurizing that vestibule that small space between the two so we've got confirmation hard captures complete and now we're ready to get into those hatch operations one more time if you missed it docking occurred at 4 37 and 49 seconds uh pacific time that's 11 37 and 49 seconds gmt while both vehicles were flying 261 statute miles over the central pacific now with dragon firmly attached we're going to toss it over to the international space station flight control room in houston for shaniqua vareen to take us through the next steps as we get ready to open up the hatches shaniqua thanks dan and thanks hawthorne for your help today we had a very exciting moment here in mission control houston as well following dragon stocking at 6 37 pm central time while flying 261 statute miles over the central part of the pacific ocean it's great to see dragon docked the energy in the room here is high there was applause and smiles all around the room now that we're docked like dan mentioned tom marshburn is securing some hardware and then moving right into hatch operations first we'll get the large hatch at node 2 zenith giving them access inside the pressurized mating adapter then we'll have to pressurize the vestibule thank you and that was core jake vendel in mcc x spacex mission control in hawthorne california giving the crew good words inside dragon freedom again now that they are docked tom marshburn inside the station is securing some hardware and then moving right into hatch operations first spacex on dragon to ground no response required cameras are external we're currently in between satellites and you're now seeing a live view inside the international space station flight control room once we have fused in spacex on dragon to ground no response required for your awareness we'll be clearing the rgps one alert shortly and freedom copy thank you spacex freedom on uh the cabin mic com check freedom spacex on dragon to ground i had you 5x5 on the cabin mic copy thanks if you're just joining us we're we have live coverage as we just watched as crew dragon freedom docked to the international space station at 6 37 pm central time while flying 261 statute miles over the central part of the pacific ocean now that dragon is docked tom marshburn as well as the rest of his crew is securing some hardware and then moving right into the hatch operations first he will open the large hatchet node to zenith giving them access inside the pressurized mating adapter then we'll have to pressurize the vestibule which that small space between the hatches on dragon and the space station this was previously exposed to vacuum prior to docking and we will need to fill it with air and make sure its pressure is nearly equal with the atmospheric pressures on dragon and the station marshburn will use a small valve on the station's hatch to slowly introduce air into the vestibule flight controllers here in houston will monitor the pressure and the temperature readings inside and verify that everything is leak-free before we get ready to open up the hatches we expect this to take about two hours to get everything pressurized and checked out before we open the hatches with dragon attach currently target to open a little round a little bit after 8 pm central time following hatch open the crew will configure dragon for an on orbit ops and get a safety briefing a few hours after that russian cosmonauts will wake up to begin their day which will include a spacewalk they will also have welcoming remarks with the four crew for astronauts dragon spacex on dragon to ground the iss crew has begun vestibule pressurization and investigative pressurization feel free to reference 4.400 section 4 for telemetry if you'd like and freedom copy if that's you're currently seeing inside the international space station as tom marshburn and caleb barron are preparing the area for the crew to ingress the space station they're currently removing baggage and stowage area out of the way so there's more room for the crew to float through and clarification that was rasha chari and caleb baron removing stowage to prepare for the crew to float through once the hatchiness the hatch is open now docked tom marshburn current station commander is now securing some hardware and moving into the hatch operations you saw other crew members just removing stowage from the area preparing for it to give them access to inside the pressurized mating adapter they'll then be able to pressurize the vestibule that space between the hatches on dragon and the space station this was previously exposed to vacuum prior to talking freedom copies with the earlier docking time we also expect the hatch to open just as early around the 8 p.m time frame central time it takes about two hours to get everything pressurized and checked out before we open the hatches between dragon and the station following hatch open there typically would be a welcome ceremony however the crew will be awaiting the russian cosmonauts to awake and have welcome remarks with the rest of the other four crew members crew 4 will join them and make a compliment of 11 astronauts doing welcoming remarks that'll happen around 1 40 a.m central time currently on station is crew 3 astronauts national astronauts kayla baron rasha achary tom marshburn issa or european space station agency astronaut matthias maurer also aboard is the spaceship also aboard the space station as russian cosmonauts sergey korsakoff oleg artemyev and denise motve currently on your screen is nasa astronaut caleb bearing going through a stowage bag dragon is currently in repress about five more minutes on the leak checks and about 45 minutes after that we are looking for the hatch to open right around that 8 pm central time frame if you're just joining us we have live mission coverage of nasa's spacex crew 4 mission to the international space station where they'll stay for a six-month rotational mission dragon has officially docked to the station around 6 37 p.m central time and we're now awaiting repress of repress and pressurization of the vegetable between the space station and the dragon freedom capsule flight controllers here in mission control houston are monitoring the pressure and temperature readings inside and verifying that nothing's leaking before we ready we get ready to open up the hatches we're expecting to take another 45 minutes to get everything pressurized and checked out before we open the hatches up for dragon and the station currently targeted to open up around 8 pm central time following hatch open we'll see the crew 4 crew along with the other 7 astronauts on board the station eagerly awaiting to greet their new crewmates post hatch open that will end our coverage today but we'll actually come back on air around 1 40 a.m central time to see the crew welcome remarks where crew 3 astronauts nasa astronauts kayla baron rashachari tom marshburn issa astronaut matthias maurer and russian cosmonauts sergey korsakoff oleg artemyev and denise montvayev all greet and welcome each other aboard you're currently seeing live views inside the international space station in the harmony module where kayla baron in your bottom left-hand corner is beginning to do some preparations or continue continuing preparations for the arrival for crew four they docked at the international space station at 6 37 pm central time while flying 261 statute miles above the central pacific ocean we exp dragon spacex on dragon to ground for status and spacex from freedom we've got the four of us out of the suits uh we are continuing uh through the two procedures 4.012 and ford at 400 and uh you are welcome to come back on board if you want okay copy all farmer thanks for the update and a quick update for you we're seeing indications of a good vestibule leak check standby for more and we'll bring the cameras back on board okay copy that and for your awareness we're about 12 minutes into the suit dry cycle copy 12 minutes you just heard calls from the corps or the crew operations resource engineer at spacex into the crew dragon freedom telling the crew about a good vegetable check and the crew reported back that they have doffed their own their suits are taken off their suits and they are preparing for hatch open as well running through some checks on their side before the hatches can be opened dragon spacex on dragon to ground cameras are back on board we see jessica's glove copy that welcome back you're back seeing live views inside crew dragon freedom you currently see a couple empty suits still in the chairs as the crew are continuing to do preparations to open the hatch and ingress the international space station we're looking for that ingress to happen around 30 minutes from now on the big loop on the big loop and freedom's ready on the big loop houston is about five minutes copies and that was capcom alex kanellinkos here in mission control houston relaying to the dragon crew aboard freedom that they're calm to calm for station to dragon will be down about five minutes but they'd still have connection through space to ground and dragon to ground to mission control houston nasa astronaut kayla baron running through her procedures and checklists on her ipad collect velcro to her leg as she's running through procedures to continue preparations for crew 4's arrival in ingress out of the dragon into the international space station station and dragon houston we are ready we are ready for vehicle to vehicle voice checks on hardline on the egg loop is ready for voice checks and freedoms ready for voice checks on the big loops and houston freedom we have you loud and clear on station and station freedom has you live and clear also houston copies good voice checks spacex freedom for inventory freedom spacex on dragon to ground ready to copy all right okay jessica to read back two meals from 309 two meals from 301 five water bottles from 208 and the rest of the meals are per the packing plan that's a good read back okay copy all thanks for the report i want to clarify does that include the morning meal inventory from a few hours ago hey firm the meals in 309 and 301 were our breakfast this morning and we haven't consumed any food since okay cup all thanks for the clarification sounds good we're currently in a brief handover between satellites you'll currently see a live view inside the international space station flight control room but we'll get views of dragon and inside the space station back to you shortly dragon spacex on dragon to ground for 4.400 and go for freedom okay freedom uh we expect that the iss side is close to ready for hatch open we're hoping you can step into section five of 4.400 for the waste system flush and we will stand by for a report on which water bottle you intend to use for that task okay freedom copies the status we have water bottles set aside from bag 208 that are already accounted they were partially used before we're going to use those for the waste flush okay copy all thanks for the clarification sounds good for those of you just joining us crew for nasa astronauts chill lindgren bob hines and jessica watkins and european space agency astronaut samantha chris ferretti had a successful launch this morning around 2 52 a.m central time from launch complex 39a at nasa's kennedy space center in florida we saw crew 4 on dragon freedom adopt to the international space station at 6 37 pm central time we're looking for them to open hatches to let the crew ingress in just about 18 minutes from now that's 8 pm central time we're looking for the crew to be able to ingress to open hatches and ingress into the international space station we're in a brief handover period currently between satellites and we'll have views of dragon and the international space station back shortly you are currently seeing a live view of the international space station flight control room here in houston texas where flight controller flight director adi boulos saw us through integrated operations as well as stalking to his right you see alex kanelankos the capcom or the capsule communicator who you'll hear talking to the crew from the ground up to the station houston dragon station we're ready for hatch equalization [Applause] and dragon copies we're ready station houston on the big loop we need about three to four minutes to finish equalization and tom just clarification on that your go to equalize it will take three to four minutes after you go to equalize it'll take three to four minutes and you're getting live views of mission control houston where flight controllers here are looking after the international space station which freedom dragon just docked to around 7 30 6 37 pm central time you just heard capcom here in mission control houston confirm with the crew that equalization is ready to start between iss and freedom he also let the crew know that it would take about three to four minutes for that to continue and verify that the hatch is good to be open between the station and freedom earlier we did hear a call to the crew saying that the iss side is close to ready for hatch to open and that the system flush was needed on the spacex dragon side again the clock has started from freedom to the international space station for equalization it's in progress and we're looking for three or four minutes before that is complete again we are between satellites and currently in a loss of signal which is expected at this time and so we're waiting on views to come return from dragon and the international space station as we wait we are in the middle of a timer as equalization is underway and that's waiting on pressurization to equalize between freedom and the space station before the hatch can be opened again we're in the middle of pressurization to equalize pressure between freedom and the space station spacex ready to copy on dragging the ground hey um could you please take the cameras external we're going to be changing into our uh okay cup y'all will take the cameras external get right back to you freedom spacex cameras are external station houston on space to ground three no response required we see in the video just letting you know that we're reconfiguring the potable water source so you may hear some valve movement copy thumbs up and that was thumbs up from the crew as they heard from capcom and we have good equalization on the iss and between dragon and the iss as soon as the space uh craft crew dragon freedom is ready um i'm told that we are ready to have hatch open just here shortly again we're looking for that it happened around 8 p.m central time dragon spacex on dragon to ground for next steps freedom ready copy all right freedom the iss is ready ground teams are also ready for dragon hatch opening on your uh on your go um sorry you have a go to open the ford hatch and then contact us per step 6.6 of 4.400. copy it's going to take us about five to 10 more minutes okay cup y'all and you just heard from the crew operations resource engineer or court at spacex telling crew dragon the crew aboard dragon that they are ready to open the hatch as soon as they are ready the crew did report they need about five to ten more minutes before they're ready to open but that's great news to hear that we are ready here shortly around 8 p.m central time to open the hatch again preparations continuing on both sides station houston on space to ground three for kayla notice in your just above and to your right there's a cpa cable sticking out if you can tuck that back in just so yes that right there so it doesn't get snagged thank you so much and you just heard capcom alex kanelanko's given a few uh checks left to the crew inside the international space station to prepare for the ingress of crew 4. as you can see preparations are still continuing between the iss and on crew dragon freedom the crew for astronauts are getting things configured and will join the seven person crew on station bringing the total crew members on station to 11. you currently see a view of all all four crew 3 members while the three russian cosmonauts sleep we will be back on air after hatch opening around 1 40 a.m and all seven excuse me all 11 crew members will be awake for a welcome for welcoming remarks if you're just joining us you're looking live inside the international space station as the crew aboard prepare for the ingress of crew 4 which docked to the international space station xenoport on the harmony module at 6 37 pm central time pressurization equalization has happened and we are waiting for the spacex crude crew dragon freedom crew members to open their hatch and ingress the international space station with about a 15 or 16 hour rendezvous to docking this was one of the fastest if not the fastest commercial crew flights to the international space station if you're just joining us you're watching the live broadcast for the crew 4 mission which had a successful launch at 2 52 a.m central time and docked to the space station at 6 37 pm central today now we're just waiting for the crew to open the hatch in ingress or come aboard the space station which will happen shortly the crew on board station you see on the screen is nasa astronaut kayla baron and rasha chari they're eagerly awaiting the crew four astronauts to come aboard station this is uh freedom on we are ready for hatch opening freedom spacex on the big loop go for hatch opening patient copies dragon spacex on the big loop hoping to bring cameras on board and you just heard a few checks from the crew operations resource engineer or the corps at spacex great news with that go for hatch opening and we do have a go for hatch open but we are waiting on the crew inside dragon to finish some preparations and open the hatch after the hatch is open it probably will take another few minutes for the crew to ingress the space station and be welcome to their new home for the next six months as a part of the expedition 67 crew they will continue to walk through some procedures as they ingress before ingressing the international space station they are looking to install imv ducting mixing the air of the space station environment with the air inside the crew dragon freedom they'll seal some of the io or lithium hydroxide cartridges that scrub carbon dioxide inside the dragon capsule on the ride to the international space station they'll check some vent valves as well as some vent oils as well so they may be just a little bit more time until we welcome them aboard and dragon hatch is open and they are welcoming the crew for astronauts on board you see all smiles around as jessica watkins bob hines samantha christopher reddy have ingressed and are hugging all their current crew 3 crew members and last one in we see commander of dragon chell lindgren now entering into the international space station you're currently looking at all eight crew members of crew three and four together inside the harmony module welcoming the new crew aboard crew 3 and crew 4 will do what's called a direct handover for the next five days there'll be two dragons docked to the international space station crew 3 currently set to undock in just about five days from now station houston on space to ground three no response required just letting you know pwd is going to be down 10 to 15 minutes sorry for the timing but and tell i'll owe you a beverage when you come back home houston station imv duct installation is complete go for imv fan activation houston copies wow what an incredible morning it is so great to see crew 4 astronauts finally on board the international space station after about a 15 hour flight the crew is now aboard and ready to continue their six-month rotational mission aboard the international space station they were welcomed by the current space station crew members of crew 3 the full complement now up to 11 human beings as a part of the expedition 67 crew it's been an incredible 24 hours and with crew board crew 4 now aboard the international space station that's it for us in houston welcome aboard crew 4. now let's turn it over to hawthorne thanks shaniqua so great to see crew 4 on board as she said it's been quite a 24 hours you know we had everything kicked off really with suit up that was actually yesterday around 11 50 pm eastern time and then later on a couple hours later we saw the crew ingress into dragon freedom uh that was around 1 17 a.m eastern and then of course we had an on time liftoff from kennedy space center pad 39a at 3 52 a.m eastern this morning that was followed by a stage one landing on our drone ship a successful dragon separation as well as deployment of the nose cone which we saw in action on our webcasts and then if you join us earlier this afternoon we saw the five major burns that dragon performed as it approached the international space station we were able to confirm docking at 7 37 pm eastern and then we just saw ingress into station just a couple minutes ago so super exciting on behalf of spacex and nasa i want to thank you for watching today's webcast and for your interest in this exciting fourth rotational mission yeah and now that the crew is on board they've got a couple of tasks to go through shaniqua was talking about they're going to be integrating dragon's cabin with that on board the station you know on the ride uphill dragon has its own eclipse environmental control life support system regulating temperature humidity control describing co2 and that temperature by the way can be actively controlled by the astronauts on the displays or changed by the team here in mission control hawthorne and so they have to install that imv ducting we heard that done the intermodular ventilation integrate dragon's cabin atmosphere with the rest of the station uh they're also installing some seals around the hatchway around dragon and a hatch cover as well and with them arrived we're less than a week away now from the return of crew 3 so pretty much everything we just saw we're going to see in reverse as those four crew members get ready to come home and end their long duration stay onboard the station uh as you heard right now we're targeting may 4th for that return everything is going to depend on weather so be sure to follow nasa and spacex as we're going to be bringing you live coverage of their entire journey but then follow us on social media for real-time updates as we continue counting down to the end of the crew 3 missions so thank you again for watching go nasa go spacex go crew 4 and pretty soon come home crew 3. with that we'll wrap it up and we'll see you again real soon you

Channel: SpaceX

Views: 1,395,193

Keywords: SpaceX, Space, Musk, Mission, Crew-3, NASA, Astronauts, International Space Station, ISS, ESA, European Space Agency, Human Spaceflight, Crew-4

Id: tgaki17-Ca8

Length: 219min 35sec (13175 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 28 2022