SpaceX has set a new record for the fastest flight of astronauts on a Crew Dragon spacecraft. Elon Musk’s space company delivered four astronauts to the International Space Station in less than 16 hours as part of the Crew-4 mission. This “flight” was the fastest since SpaceX began crewed flights in 2020.
“This is the fastest flight we have ever made, from the moment of launch to docking with the ISS. It took about the same time as getting by plane from New York to Singapore,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager.
Crew Dragon Flight Time
The Crew-4 mission launched on a new Crew Dragon capsule called Freedom and a Falcon 9 rocket on April 27, 2022, at 10:52 a.m. Kyiv time from site 39A of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The docking with the ISS took place at 3:37 a.m. Kyiv time on April 28. The total flight time was 15 hours and 45 minutes. For comparison, SpaceX’s first crewed flight for NASA in May 2020 as part of the Demo-2 mission took about 19 hours to get to the station, and the last Crew-3 flight took almost a whole day.
Crew-4 Mission
The Crew-4 mission sent three NASA astronauts and one European Space Agency astronaut to the ISS for six months. On board Crew Dragon were Commander Kjell Lindgren, pilot Bob Hines, specialist Jessica Watkins and flight specialist Samantha Cristoforetti from the European Space Agency.
Although the Crew-4 Dragon flight was SpaceX’s fastest “flight” to the ISS, it is not the fastest crewed flight ever. This title still belongs to the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which in October 2020 was listed in the Guinness Book of Records for the fastest time to the International Space Station in 3 hours and 3 minutes.
According to Space
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