Axiom-4's journey began at 12.01 pm Wednesday when SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in the US.
New Delhi:The Crew Dragon capsule - with four astronauts, including India's Shubhanshu Shukla as part of the Axiom-4 mission - docked at the International Space Station Thursday evening, completing a 28-hour flight from Florida's Kennedy Space Centre to a point 424km above the northern Atlantic Ocean.
Docking is the procedure by which a spacecraft connects to the space station.
But before that docking can even begin the spacecraft must first rendezvous with the space station, meaning they must both be in the same orbital plane and be positioned close to each other.
What follows is a series of complicated manoeuvres, including precise positioning by matching positional (location) and velocity vectors (speed and direction) to confirm a safe and secure physical connection between the spacecraft and space station to allow exchange of astronauts and cargo.
And then, at 4.03pm (India time), Mission Control confirmed a 'soft capture', i.e., a connection allowing the spacecraft, named Grace, and the station some room to move to absorb kinetic energy generated during initial contact. Minutes later a 'hard capture', i.e., a more robust connection, was confirmed.
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