Four Astronauts Arrive at ISS, Restoring Full Crew

Four astronauts arrived at the International Space Station on Saturday, February 14, 2026, restoring the orbiting laboratory to its full seven-member crew after a medical emergency forced an early return of their predecessors last month. The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev docked autonomously with the station at 3:15 p.m. Eastern time, about 277 miles above Earth. Hatches opened roughly two hours later at 5:14 p.m., allowing the newcomers to join the three remaining crew members in greetings marked by hugs and high-fives.

The arrivals marked the end of a period of reduced operations on the station, which had been running with a skeleton crew of one American and two Russians since mid-January. Officials described the January incident as a serious health issue affecting one member of the previous Crew-11 mission, launched last summer. That astronaut, whose identity NASA has withheld citing medical privacy, fell ill on January 7, just before a scheduled spacewalk. The agency decided to bring the entire four-person crew home early on January...