Aerospace company SpaceX has launched the Crew-4 mission, in which a crew of four astronauts will be delivered to the International Space Station. This launch was planned to take place earlier, but due to the fact that the participants in the commercial mission of Axiom Space 1 could not leave the orbital station at the scheduled time, it had to be postponed.

Image Source: SpaceX

The Falcon 9 launch vehicle with the Crew Dragon manned spacecraft, on board of which the crew is located, was launched from the launch site at Cape Canaveral in Florida at 03:52 local time (10:52 Moscow time). Approximately nine minutes after launch, the first stage of the rocket should land on a special floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean, located off the coast of Florida.

The crewed Crew Dragon will continue moving and, if all goes according to plan, will rendezvous with the ISS in about 17 hours. As part of the Crew-4 mission, SpaceX is delivering a group of astronauts to the ISS for the fourth time. This time, the crew included three US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronauts and one European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut.

Crew-4 crew commander was NASA astronaut Dr. Kjell Lindgren, a certified emergency physician and surgeon. For him, this is the second flight to the ISS. Lindgren last visited the space station in 2015 and spent 141 days in orbit, performing two spacewalks and taking part in more than 100 experiments.

Crew-4 mission crew / Image Source: SpaceX

The second crew member was rookie astronaut Bob Hines, 47, a US Air Force fighter and test pilot with over 3,500 flight hours in 50 types of aircraft. The third NASA astronaut was geologist Jessica Watkins, who also worked as part of the scientific team of the Curiosity rover and studied landslides on Mars and Earth. They will be accompanied by Samantha Cristoforetti, 45, an ESA astronaut and Italian Air Force jet pilot, for whom this is her second flight to the ISS.