Five spacecraft are docked at the International Space Station after a SpaceX Dragon cargo craft arrived Thursday, NASA reported on Oct. 16, 2026. The uncrewed Dragon docked automatically to the Harmony module's space-facing port at 10:27 a.m. EDT, after launching atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 6:33 a.m. Wednesday from Florida with over 6,300 pounds of science, supplies and roll-out solar arrays.

NASA flight engineer Anil Menon ran pressure and leak checks and equalized pressure before opening the hatch, then entered Dragon with flight engineers Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney of NASA and Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency. The crew began moving scientific samples from portable freezers and incubators into station freezers and research racks. Upcoming experiments include work on artificial retinas and growing heart tissue in weightlessness, while investigations starting Friday and over the weekend cover protein crystals for cancer treatment research and plants' genetic response to microgravity.

The roll-out solar arrays are stowed in Dragon's unpressurized trunk, where the Canadarm2 robotic arm will retrieve them. Menon and Kutryk are scheduled to finish installing them during spacewalks planned for Oct. 29 and Nov. 5. Roscosmos crew members also completed a weeklong study of an exoskeleton suit for remotely controlling robots and a virtual reality test of balance adaptation to weightlessness.