Eight spacecraft are now docked to the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time ever, making it feel very full, much like many of us after Thanksgiving. This is a significant milestone for the ISS, as it marks the first time all eight docking ports are occupied. The ISS, which began construction in 1998, initially had fewer ports. To accommodate the incoming Soyuz crew, Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston used the ISS' robotic Canadarm2 to move Northrop Grumman's Cygnus-23 cargo spacecraft, ensuring appropriate clearance for the crewed spacecraft. Cygnus-23 was then reinstalled at the Earth-facing port of the station's Unity module. Another Soyuz vehicle, Soyuz MS-27, is also docked at the ISS, but it is scheduled to depart on December 8 with NASA's Jonny Kim and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, landing in Kazakhstan shortly after. The remaining five spacecraft include the Russian Progress-92 and Progress-93 robotic cargo spacecraft, the Japanese HTV-X1 cargo craft, and two SpaceX Dragon capsules. These Dragon capsules are at the two other ports on Harmony used for visiting spacecraft. One is the Commercial Resupply Services-33 (CRS-33) robotic cargo capsule, and the other is the Crew-11 Dragon, which is on Harmony's space-facing port. Crew-11 is an astronaut mission, with its crew members completing the Expedition 73 long-duration astronauts on the ISS. The quartet will return to Earth in 2026. This achievement highlights the increasing complexity and utilization of the ISS, with a diverse range of spacecraft contributing to its operations.
