"Contact confirmed at 5:30pm ET (2130 UTC). Next, the Dragon spacecraft will complete the docking sequence, and undergo a series of checks before crews can open the hatch and welcome #Crew9 to the @Space_Station," the US space agency said on X.
The Crew-9 mission was originally planned for four people, but was reduced to two to provide two seats for test astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who were delayed in orbit due to problems with the Starliner spacecraft. NASA has decided to send experienced astronaut Nick Hague and Russia's Alexander Gorbunov, whose flight on the American spacecraft is carried out under the Roscosmos-NASA cross-flight agreement, as part of Crew-9.
The mission's crew arrived at the Cape Canaveral spaceport in Florida earlier this week to complete preparations for the launch. The launch was planned for Thursday, September 26, but it was postponed due to weather conditions. Crew Dragon finally launched to the ISS on Saturday.
Crew-9 is scheduled to last about five months, with the crew returning to Earth with astronauts Wilmore and Williams currently scheduled for February 2025.
Williams and Wilmore were the first test crew for Boeing's new Starliner spacecraft, arriving at the station on June 6. Their mission was scheduled to last about a week, but problems with the spacecraft's engine and a subsequent helium leak discovered during docking with the station delayed the test. Experts were unable to fix the problems, and Starliner returned to Earth without a crew.