A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched early on Friday, 13 February, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying four astronauts and cosmonauts on an eight-month mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The Crew-12 team includes two Americans, a French astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut.
The 25-storey rocket, topped with the autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule Freedom, lifted off at 10:15 GMT, its nine Merlin engines producing a dramatic display of fire and vapour.
The crew is expected to dock with the ISS on Saturday after a 34-hour flight, where they will join the station’s current occupants: NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev.
Crew-12 is led by veteran NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, who is returning for her second mission following a historic all-female spacewalk in 2019.
Joining her are rookie astronaut Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot of France and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, who is embarking on his second mission to the ISS.
During their time aboard the station, the team will conduct scientific, medical and technical research. This will include studies on pneumonia-causing bacteria, as well as experiments involving plants and nitrogen-fixing microbes aimed at supporting future space agriculture.
Their arrival follows the early departure of four Crew-11 members due to a medical evacuation in mid-January.
The ISS, which spans the length of an American football field, is operated by a US-Russian-led consortium that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European nations. It has been continuously inhabited for more than 25 years.
NASA has confirmed its commitment to maintaining the station until at least 2030, continuing a decades-long multinational effort that began after the Cold War.
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