SpaceX Crew-2

SpaceX Crew-2 was the second operational flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft, and the third overall crewed orbital flight of the Commercial Crew Program. The mission was launched on April 23, 2021, at 09:49:02 UTC, and docked to the International Space Station on April 24 at 09:08 UTC.

SpaceX Crew-2 used the same capsule as Crew Dragon Demo-2 (Endeavour) and launched on the same Falcon 9 booster as SpaceX Crew-1 (B1061.1).

With its return to Earth the evening of November 9, 2021, the mission set a record for the longest spaceflight by a U.S. crewed spacecraft with a mission duration of 199 days before being surpassed by SpaceX Crew-8 with a mission duration of 235 days respectively.

On July 28, 2020, JAXA, ESA, and NASA confirmed their astronaut assignments aboard this mission.

German astronaut Matthias Maurer was the backup for Pesquet, while Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa trained as backup to Hoshide.

The second SpaceX operational mission in the Commercial Crew Program launched on April 23, 2021. The Crew Dragon Endeavour docked to the International Docking Adapter (IDA) at the forward port of the Harmony module. This was the first mission with astronauts on board to use a previously flown booster launch vehicle.

All crew members were veteran astronauts, though this was Megan McArthur's first visit to the ISS (as her first spaceflight was STS-125, a mission to the Hubble Space Telescope). McArthur used the same seat on the Crew Dragon Endeavour which her husband, Bob Behnken, used on the Demo-2 mission. Akihiko Hoshide served as the second Japanese ISS commander during his stay. It was the second mission by Thomas Pesquet to the International Space Station and was named Alpha, after Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to Earth.

To prepare for the arrival of a Starliner, the Endeavour docked to ISS at Harmony forward port was undocked at 10:45 UTC and relocated to Harmony zenith port on July 21, 2021, at 11:36 UTC.