A SpaceX rocket successfully launched from Florida yesterday, carrying a crew of two US Nasa astronauts, a French astronaut, and a Russian cosmonaut destined for an eight-month scientific mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in a microgravity environment.
The Falcon 9 rocket, equipped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule named “Freedom”, took off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station along Florida’s Atlantic Coast at approximately 5:15 am EST (1015 GMT). The launch, broadcasted live on Nasa-SpaceX webcast, displayed the towering vehicle ascending from the launch pad, powered by its nine Merlin engines consuming 700,000 gallons of fuel per second, creating vapor clouds and a glowing fireball in the early morning sky.
After nine minutes, the Falcon 9’s upper-stage rocket had achieved a speed exceeding 17,000 miles per hour (27,360 kph), successfully placing the Crew Dragon into orbit. Meanwhile, the reusable lower-stage booster autonomously returned to Earth, landing safely at a designated pad in Cape Canaveral.
The crew members were expected to arrive at the space station later in the day following a 34-hour journey, where they would dock with the lab orbiting approximately 250 miles (420 km) above Earth. This mission, known as Crew-12, signifies the 12th long-duration ISS team transported by Nasa aboard a SpaceX launch vehicle since the company’s inception in 2002 by entrepreneur Elon Musk, who initiated US astronaut missions in May 2020.
Leading the Crew-12 team was Jessica Meir, a 48-year-old astronaut and marine biologist on her second space station visit, nearly seven years after achieving history alongside Nasa colleague Christina Koch by conducting the first all-female spacewalk.
Expressing gratitude, Meir communicated with the SpaceX flight control center in Los Angeles, acknowledging the intense journey and readiness for the expedition ahead. Accompanying her on the voyage were Jack Hathaway, a 43-year-old former US Navy fighter pilot and rookie astronaut; Sophie Adenot, a 43-year-old European Space Agency astronaut and proficient helicopter pilot from France; and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, a former military pilot embarking on his second ISS mission.