The four astronauts arrive at International Space Station via SpaceX capsule on August 2, 2025, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
The astronauts started their 15 hours journey to the International Space Station on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 Mission. Liftoff occurred at 11:23 a.m. ETD. The spacecraft docked autonomously to the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at approximately 3a.m. on Saturday, August 2. “Hello, space station!” Fincke radioed as soon as the capsule docked.
Moving into ISS are NASA’s Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke, Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov. They will be spending six months at the orbiting lab, swapping places with their colleagues at the space station.
Earlier the astronauts were assigned to other mission. Cardman and another astronaut were pulled from a SpaceX flight last year to make room for NASA’s two stuck astronauts, Boeing Starliner test pilots Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, whose space station stay went from one week to more than nine months.
Fincke and Yui had been training for the next Starliner mission. But with Starliner grounded by thruster and other problems until 2026, the two switched to SpaceX.
Platonov was dropped from the Soyuz launch lineup a couple of years ago because of an undisclosed illness.
