After a day of transit, SpaceX’s latest cargo shipment arrived Monday at the International Space Station. Megan McArthur, a NASA astronaut, was responsible for the automated docking.
“No one has ever sent me a spaceship as a birthday gift before.” After the capsule arrived, she said that she appreciated it.
The capsule was launched Sunday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. It contains lemons and cherry tomatoes, avocados, and ice cream for McArthur, her six crewmates, and a few tons of other gear.
Only a few days before the first of three spacewalks, the shipment arrived.
The Russians will be performing back-to-back spacewalks starting Friday to outfit the new laboratory that arrived in July.
A Japanese-French spacewalking team will then venture out Sept. 12, to install a bracket to hold new solar panels that are due to arrive next spring. The NASA-directed spacewalk was supposed to have taken place last week but was delayed after Mark Vande Hei (U.S. spacewalker) suffered a pinched nerve. Station managers decided to replace him by Thomas Pesquet, a French astronaut.
