Successful start to the Crew-7 mission: Danish astronaut makes history

NASA's SpaceX Crew-7 mission has successfully launched and the crewed Dragon Crew Endurance spacecraft has reached the International Space Station. Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen is the first ESA astronaut to fly a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

On Saturday, August 26th, at 3:27 AM, the United States' space agency NASA's SpaceX Crew-7 mission set off successfully as the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Crew Dragon Endurance capsule towards the International Space Station. The spacecraft was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which is operated by NASA. The Crew-7 mission is NASA's Commercial Crew Program's (CCP) seventh crewed space mission.

NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli serves as mission commander, whereas European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen makes history as the first ESA astronaut to fly a SpaceX Dragon capsule as mission pilot. In 2015, the Danish astronaut – or "space viking" – Mogensen already spent ten days onboard the International Space Station as part of ESA's Iriss mission.
The crew further includes Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov, who are serving as mission specialists. The planned duration of the crew's stay on the ISS is six months, during which they will conduct approximately 200 scientific experiments. Andreas Mogensen will support ESA's Huginn science mission by carrying out 30 experiments.

The Finnish Space Agency follows the Crew-7 mission with great interest: "Finland has recently joined ESA's human spaceflight program – against this backdrop it is particularly exciting to follow ESA's Huginn mission", comments Tuija Ypyä, ministerial advisor at the Finnish Space Committee Secretariat and Finnish delegate to ESA's human spaceflight program.

Watch the launch video: https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=crew-7