The crew aboard Crew Dragon Resilience captured the beautiful view out the window on the way to the ISS station.
In the clip, a black and blue starry space is flown over by astronaut Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). “I didn’t think the view would be so good, then my colleague Soichi Noguchi filmed the Resilience night scene timelapse and I was very impressed,” said NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins.
Noguchi and Hopkins are among 10 astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) circling more than 400 km above the ground. They flew to the ISS station with two other NASA astronauts during a SpaceX Crew-1 mission in November 2020. Four astronauts, including Noguchi and Hopkins, must navigate the Crew Dragon Resilience to another junction to make room for the next SpaceX missions.
The astronauts of Crew 1 were the first to reach the ISS by private spacecraft. Noguchi, who filmed the scene of the stars moving outside the Crew Dragon spacecraft, flew to the ISS three times. His first flight was on a space shuttle, which has been stopped since 2011. After that, Noguchi sailed on the Soyuz ship operated by the Russian space agency Roscosmos. In his last flight, he became the first Japanese astronaut to fly on a private spacecraft.
With SpaceX’s other Crew Dragon slated to arrive on the ISS on April 22 and cargo flights take place in the coming weeks, astronauts must clear the junction. The Resilience ship is associated with the Harmony module but must change seats on April 5. NASA’s Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, along with Noguchi, put on a spacesuit and moved the hold in about 45 minutes. The reason they needed to move the train was to make sure there was enough room for people to leave if there was a problem with the ISS station.
SpaceX’s second Crew Dragon will bring NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough (captain) and Megan McArthur (pilot) to the ISS. Accompanying the April 22 flight were European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet and JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide. On April 28, the Crew-1 mission will end when Hopkins, Walker, Victor Glover, and Soichi Noguchi land near Florida, USA.
