A SpaceX rocket was launched from Florida on Friday with a crew of two NASA astronauts, a French astronaut, and a Russian cosmonaut. The crew is headed to the International Space Station for an eight month science mission in microgravity.
The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, topped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule dubbed “Freedom”, was launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, along Florida’s Atlantic Coast, at about 5:15 a.m. EST (1015 GMT).
The crew included the NASA astronauts commander Jessica Meir (USA) and pilot Jack Hathaway (USA), European Space Agency astronaut and mission specialist Sophie Adenot (France), and Roscocosmos cosmonaut and mission specialist Andrey Fedyaev (Russia).
NASA chief Jared Isaacman said Crew-12 have had an “absolutely wonderful start” and praises the “very impressive” return of the Falcon 9 rocket less than eight minutes after lift off. He added that the crew are now safely on their way to the International Space Station and they are continuing to monitor progress.
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Isaacman also said the crew will continue critical scientific research and will make history in a number of ways.
A live NASA-SpaceX webcast showed the 25-story-tall vehicle rising from the launch tower as its nine Merlin engines roared to life, gulping 700,000 gallons of fuel per second, emitting clouds of vapor and a reddish fireball that lit up the predawn sky.
Nine minutes into its flight, the Falcon 9’s upper-stage rocket had accelerated to more than 17,000 miles per hour (27,360 kph) before thrusting the Crew Dragon into orbit. By then, the reusable lower-stage booster had flown itself back to Earth and touched down safely at a Cape Canaveral landing pad.
The crew were set to reach the space station on Saturday afternoon after a 34-hour flight, docking with the orbiting laboratory platform some 250 miles (420 km) above Earth. This mission, which was dubbed Crew-12 marks the twelfth long-duration ISS team flown by NASA on a SpaceX rocket, ever since the private rocket firm started launching U.S. astronauts.
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Jessica Meir, 48, a veteran astronaut and marine biologist led the crew nearly seven years after making history with NASA colleague Christina Koch by completing history’s first all-female spacewalk.
“Thank you team, that was quite a ride,” Meir radioed to the SpaceX flight control center near Los Angeles. “Crew-12 is grateful and ready for the journey ahead. We’re on our way.”
Upon arrival, the crew will undertake a number of research tasks in microgravity. Those include studies of pneumonia-causing bacteria to improve treatments on Earth, and experiments with plant and nitrogen-fixing microbe interactions to boost food production in space.
Much of this research is aimed at perfecting technologies for NASA to use as part of their Artemis program, successor to the Apollo program from half a century ago.
The upcoming Artemis II mission is a 10-day test voyage designed to fly four astronauts around the moon and back. It is set to launch as soon as last month.