Watch the Crew Dragon hurtling through space at 17,500 mph

By Trevor Mogg Published October 1, 2024

The Crew-9 Crew Dragon on its way to the space station. — NASA

SpaceX has released some remarkable footage (below) showing a Crew Dragon spacecraft zipping through space, with the Pacific Ocean several hundred miles below.

Aboard the Crew Dragon were NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov as they made their way to the International Space Station (ISS) in SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission.

Recommended Videos

Dragon flying over the Pacific Ocean on its way to the @Space_Station. Docking is targeted for ~5:30 p.m. ET → https://t.co/FrV7sLMZvj pic.twitter.com/IDdDE5v0pE

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 29, 2024

In another video, this one released by NASA, we get a similar view.

The @SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is nearing the space station for a docking to the Harmony module as it soars over the Pacific Ocean. Watch live… https://t.co/uJmA8PK1Qk pic.twitter.com/Xz6yF8r75H

— International Space Station (@Space_Station) September 29, 2024

A few hours later, the Crew Dragon reached the orbital outpost before docking, enabling the two Crew-9 crew members to board and meet their nine colleagues already stationed there.

The videos were shared on X, and some commenters wondered how the footage had been captured. While one quipped that a selfie stick had been used, the reality is that it was shot from a camera aboard the ISS. With the station orbiting Earth at a speed of around 17,500 mph, it’s essential for the Crew Dragon to match this speed for docking, which is why the ISS is able to track the spacecraft’s movement so perfectly.

When a spacecraft docks with the ISS, it looks as if only the incoming vehicle is moving, and even then, at a very slow speed. But in reality, both are hurtling through space at 17,500 mph.

Hague and Gorbunov arrived safely at the ISS on Sunday. Crew-9 was originally supposed to involve four crew members, but two seats had to be left empty for NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who will travel home with Hague and Gorbunov at the end of the Crew-9 mission in February. Williams and Wilmore arrived at space station in June on the first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner, but issues with the spacecraft prompted NASA to bring it home empty. The decision meant that for Williams and Wilmore, a 10-day stay aboard the ISS suddenly turned into an eight-month mission.

Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

Topics

Space

Want a city on the Moon? Scientists say there’s not enough water

A billion tons still comes up short

Artist impression of activities in a Moon Base.

For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.

A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.

Space

NASA’s new telescope can see 100 times more sky than Hubble in a single shot

NASA just launched a $4 billion telescope to map billions of galaxies

NASA Roman Telescope Launch Featured

The Hubble telescope has an almost legendary status. Over the last three decades, Hubble gave us some of the most spectacular close-ups of the universe ever captured, and now, NASA’s newest space telescope wants to see the bigger picture. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:26 a.m. EDT on August 30. Roman is now beginning a roughly three-month journey toward the Sun-Earth L2 point, nearly a million miles away, where it will spend its primary five-year mission surveying huge portions of the cosmos.

Roman carries a 2.4-meter primary mirror, the same diameter as Hubble’s, but its Wide Field Instrument can capture a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s. NASA expects it to use that combination of sharpness and scale to map billions of galaxies, study dark matter and dark energy, and discover enormous numbers of previously unknown worlds.

Space

NASA built the Roman Space Telescope to study dark matter, but it can also help protect Earth from killer asteroids

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope wasn't built to hunt asteroids, but it turns out to be great at it.

Nancy Grace Roman space telescope.

NASA is about to launch a telescope built to unlock some of the universe's biggest mysteries, and it turns out that same design could help protect Earth along the way.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch from Kennedy Space Center on August 30, 2026, with a primary mission focused on studying dark matter and dark energy - the invisible forces shaping galaxies and cosmic expansion. Researchers now say its unique design also makes it unexpectedly effective at spotting dangerous asteroids headed our way (via MIT Technology Review).