SpaceX launches four astronauts to the International Space Station on a six-month mission

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Crew Dragon spacecraft with four astronauts aboard on Thursday for a NASA mission to the International Space Station (ISS), scheduled to last six months.

The launch took place from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, commanded by American astronaut Jessica Watkins, and accompanied by a crew consisting of an American, a Canadian, and a Russian, following a three-week delay to fix a fuel system anomaly in the spacecraft.

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The astronauts are expected to remain at the ISS until next spring. The mission will mark SpaceX’s fastest crewed launch to date, with the journey to the space station anticipated to take just eight hours.

The new crew will relieve four astronauts who have been living aboard the orbital laboratory since February.

This is the 13th mission in which SpaceX has launched a crew for NASA, excluding the test flight conducted in 2020.

The four astronauts have named their team “Crew-13,” and their mission patch includes a tribute to Apollo 13, which faced multiple dangers during its 1970 lunar mission before safely returning its crew to Earth.