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A new video from humanity’s largest orbital laboratory is a good reminder of why spaceflight continues to captivate us.
In this one-minute clip posted to X from the International Space Station (ISS) social media account, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom can be seen docked against the backdrop of the Milky Way. The arm of our galaxy that’s visible to us then gradually fades as the sunlight reflected off the spacecraft brightens to a blinding white.
The ISS travels in low-Earth orbit (LEO) at an altitude of about 260 miles (420 kilometers) and an average speed of 17,150 miles per hour (27,600 kilometers per hour). It completes an orbit around the planet once every 90 minutes. Pertaining to the transition between Earth’s light and dark sides, astronauts aboard the space station experience 16 sunrises and sunsets every day — so, if astronauts aboard the station don’t happen to be near a window to catch the view, they never have long to wait before it comes back around again.
Crew Dragon Freedom arrived to the ISS on Sep. 29, after launching aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The spacecraft carried two members of SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission: NASA astronaut Nick Hague, Crew-9 commander, and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
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Normally, a crewed SpaceX mission to the ISS includes four crewmembers, but two crewmembers of the Crew-9 rotation were already aboard the space station. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were added to the Crew-9 manifest after their original ride to the space station, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, returned to Earth without them.
Problems with Starliner’s thrusters when it arrived to the ISS in June forced NASA to find another way home for Wilmore and Williams. As a result, the agency removed NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson from the Crew-9 manifest in order to make room for Wilmore and Williams aboard the Dragon capsule designated for the mission; the spacecraft will be returning to Earth in February.
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In the meantime, Freedom is docked to the zenith port of the space station’s Harmony module. The spacecraft was recently relocated from the module’s forward port, allowing astronauts to look down at the capsule without a backdrop of the Earth. Instead, while in planet’s shadow, the stars behind Dragon light up to reveal the Milky Way in the distance.
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“When the stars and Dragon align. The Milky Way appears in the vastness of space behind the docked @SpaceX #Dragon crew spacecraft as the space station soars into an orbital sunrise,” the space station’s X post says.
