A SpaceX rocket soared into orbit from Florida early yesterday with a crew of two US Nasa astronauts, a French astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut headed to the International Space Station (ISS) 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 am EST (1015 GMT).
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 four crew were set to reach the space station this afternoon after a 34-hour flight, docking with the orbiting laboratory platform some 250 miles (420 km) above Earth.
The mission, designated Crew-12, marks the 12th long-duration ISS team that Nasa has flown aboard a SpaceX launch vehicle since the private rocket venture founded in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk began sending US astronauts to orbit in May 2020.
Crew-12 was led by Jessica Meir, 48, a veteran astronaut and marine biologist on her second trip to the space station, 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.”
Joining her on the flight was Jack Hathaway, 43, a former US Navy fighter pilot and rookie astronaut; European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, 43, a master helicopter pilot from France; and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, a former military pilot on his second mission to the ISS.
