More private transporters will be able to dock at the international space station ISS in the future. Two US astronauts installed another adapter for docking such flights during an auben mission.
Live images from the U.S. Space agency nasa showed astronauts andrew morgan and nick hague returning to the space station more than 400 kilometers above the earth after six and a half hours in space.
According to nasa, the "starliner" spacecraft of the U.S. Aerospace company boeing and the space capsules of the company spacex will dock at the adapter in the future. The landing pad had been brought to the aubenposten of humanity only a few weeks ago. The astronauts connected the adapter, which resembles a crude ring, to power and data cables and attached a camera to it.
The U.S. Wants to send its own manned flights to the ISS again in the future. In recent years, they have relied on russian soyuz spacecraft to fly crews to the ISS and back to earth. Supply flights were also handled from russia. In 2011 the americans had stopped the flights with the space shuttle.
Spacex "dragon" space freighters have already flown repeatedly to the ISS. The first flight was a good half year ago. On the other hand, starts of the "starliner" were postponed again and again. With the docking lock, nasa wants to open up the ISS for commercial business. Nasa recently announced that it would also allow space tourists to travel to the station starting next year.
The executive director for manned flights at the russian space agency roskosmos, sergej krikaljow, considers it possible that the space station will operate for another ten years. He said before the strike, according to the agency tass: "now the partners are discussing the possibility of extending the period of operation until 2028, possibly in the long term until 2030."Initially, there were plans for the ISS, which is a good 20 years old, to operate until 2024.