SpaceX Crew-6 spacecraft docks to ISS

LOS ANGELES, March 3 (Xinhua) -- SpaceX's Crew-6 Dragon spacecraft autonomously docked to the International Space Station (ISS) on early Friday.

The Dragon spacecraft Endurance was launched on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Thursday. The spacecraft docked to the ISS at 1:40 a.m. Eastern Time (0640 GMT) Friday.

Before docking, ground controllers troubleshooted a software issue on the spacecraft.

The mission, codenamed Crew-6, is the sixth crew rotation flight of a Dragon spacecraft as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program.

The mission carries NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren "Woody" Hoburg, as well as United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev to the space station for a science expedition mission.

The Crew-6 will carry out experiments including studies of how particular materials burn in microgravity, tissue chip research on heart, brain, and cartilage functions, and an investigation that will collect microbial samples from the outside of the space station, according to NASA.