CRS-22 Delivered The New ISS Roll-out Solar Arrays (iROSA)

Five spacecraft are now docked at the space station including the SpaceX Crew Dragon and Cargo Dragon vehicles, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus-15 resupply ship, all three from the United States, and Russia’s Progress 77 resupply ship and Soyuz MS-18 crew ship.

While the International Space Station was traveling more than 250 miles over the South Pacific ocean, a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft autonomously docked to the space-facing side of the orbiting laboratory’s Harmony module at 5:09 a.m. EDT, Saturday, June 5. NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur were monitoring docking operations for Dragon.

This 22nd contracted resupply mission for SpaceX delivers the new ISS Roll-out Solar Arrays (iROSA) to the space station in the trunk of the Dragon spacecraft. The robotic Canadarm2 will extract the arrays and astronauts will install them during spacewalks planned for June 16 and 20.

The Dragon launched on SpaceX’s 22nd contracted commercial resupply mission at 1:29 p.m. EDT Thursday, June 3 from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After Dragon spends about one month attached to the space station, the spacecraft will return to Earth with cargo and research.

FMI: www.nasa.gov