Crew Dragon Endeavour docked to the International Space Station

SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour that brought JAXA astronaut Aki Hoshide, NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur and ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet to the International Space Station in 2021, the Crew-2 flight. The picture was taken shortly on 26 April 2021, shortly after their arrival at the orbital outpost.

Thomas shared this image on social media with the caption:

"We hit the ground running on the Space Station ! We’ve been here for 48 hours and the whole crew is full at work on research. This is what will be a frequent work location for me: the European Columbus laboratory, early in the morning with no one inside, and super busy with 3 experiments and 5 people inside today! Looks like rush hour metro in London. Exciting times for space research!!! As we are 11 on the International Space Station and there are only 6 sleeping stations (soon we will have 7), the departing crew is camping out. Yesterday Commander Shannon Walker handed over the keys to Aki Hoshide who is now the commander of the second part of Expedition 65. The departing crew wore matching shirts. Crew-1 picked blue, we’re more going with the black and orange kind of vibe… The 11 people up here required spacecraft to got here so for the first time, we have 2 SpaceX Crew Dragons docked to the Space Station at the same time, one on the forward docking port (ours), and one on the zenith docking port (Crew-1’s). The good thing is that from their windows, you get an absolutely beautiful view of our vehicle… but not vice-versa (our windows face downwards, toward Earth. Our capsule is more beautiful anyway (yes, there is a slight change in the paint job) "

Over 200 experiments are planned during Thomas’ time in space, with 40 European ones and 12 new experiments led by the French space agency CNES.

Latest updates on the Alpha mission can be found via @esaspaceflight on Twitter, with more details on ESA’s exploration blog via thomaspesquet.esa.int.

Background information on the Alpha mission is available at www.esa.int/MissionAlpha with a brochure at www.esa.int/AlphaBrochure.