SpaceX Crew-12 Mission to International Space Station

Four people are headed to the International Space Station after a predawn Friday liftoff from Cape Canaveral in Florida. When the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off, it briefly turned the inky-black sky into daylight, as it roared to orbit on a nine-minute journey to space. The crew is expected to dock with the space station on Saturday afternoon, Eastern time.

The space station has been operating with a reduced staff of three people since last month. Typically, these NASA crew rotations overlap so the arriving astronauts can spend a few days with the previous crew for a knowledge transfer. But NASA's last mission, Crew-11, departed earlier than planned: in January, a month ahead of schedule. NASA said a crew member had a "serious" but stable health condition. It was the first medical evacuation in the orbital lab's 26-year history.

The Crew-12 mission includes two NASA astronauts: commander Jessica Meir and pilot Jack Hathaway. Also aboard the Crew Dragon capsule is Sophie Adenot, a French astronaut with the European Space Agency, and Andrey Fedyaev, a Russian cosmonaut. The four are scheduled to spend eight months aboard the station conducting science and research and performing maintenance on the outpost.

This is the second trip to the space station for Meir and Fedyaev and the first time in space for Hathaway and Adenot. Meir set a record on her last visit to the space station in 2019 when she and NASA astronaut Christina Koch conducted the first all-female spacewalk. They spent more than seven hours outside the space station replacing a broken battery charger.