A SpaceX capsule carrying four astronauts arrived at the International Space Station on Saturday, bringing the orbiting laboratory back to full staff a month after a previous crew made an emergency exit due to a medical concern, leaving behind a skeleton crew.The mission, called Crew-12, lifted off at around 5:17 a.m. ET Friday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The spacecraft spent more than 30 hours free-flying through space, slowly making its way to an ideal docking position with the ISS, which orbits roughly 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth.In this screengrab from NASA’s YouTube channel, Crew-12’s SpaceX Dragon docks at the International Space Station, on Saturday. – NASA/YoutubeNASA, which contracts SpaceX for the astronauts’ transport to and from the space station, had sought to expedite the Crew-12 launch due to the staffing situation. But the agency had to forgo two possible launch windows on Wednesday and Thursday because of unfavorable weather along the rocket’s flight path.AdvertisementAdvertisementSpaceX could have expedited the launch even more, as the spacecraft and rocket flying this mission were processed ahead of schedule, noted Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, in a Friday morning news briefing. But NASA also had to get the astronauts ready to fly.“When you look at the totality of a mission, it’s getting the vehicles, the hardware and the software ready — and also the crew,” Stich said. “And so in this case, crew training was what drove the date that we selected.”NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 crew members from left, Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway and Jessica Meir, and European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on February 9. – Kim Shiflett/NASAThe I …
