Piloting the Dragon

Crew-7 with its four astronauts launched on top a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, US at 09:27 CEST on 26 August. Andreas was the pilot on the Crew Dragon, ensuring the spacecraft’s performance and systems as they made their way to the Space Station. This was the first time a European astronaut piloted the Crew Dragon.

After 30 hours, they arrived at Earth’s orbiting laboratory and docked on the International Space Station.

Awaiting to welcome Crew-7 on the Space Station was Frank Rubio, Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, who arrived on a Soyuz rocket in September 2022, as well as Stephen Bowen, Warren Hoburg, Sultan Al Neyadi and Andrey Fedyaev of Crew-6.