SpaceX launched its second operational mission Friday morning.
The four astronauts, two of whom are American, one is Japanese, and the other French, took off in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule. They took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida before 6 a.m.
FINAL CIVILIAN CREW MEMBERS OF SPACEX DRAGON SPACECRAFT REVEALED
The group is expected to spend six months aboard the International Space Station after its capsule docks Saturday morning. It will not leave the station to return to Earth before Halloween, per SpaceX’s website.
The capsule, named the “Endeavour,” has been used before and highlights SpaceX’s reusability.
3.. 2.. 1.. and liftoff! Endeavour launches once again. Four astronauts from three countries on Crew-2, now making their way to the one and only @Space_Station: pic.twitter.com/WDAl8g7bUK
— NASA (@NASA) April 23, 2021
The “Endeavour” carried NASA’s Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the space station in May 2020.
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The astronauts aboard Friday’s launch, Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, Thomas Pesquet, and Akihiko Hoshide, will join seven astronauts who are already aboard the International Space Station, which will make it one of the largest crews to stay there at one time. Four of the astronauts who are already there arrived on a SpaceX Crew Dragon in November 2020 and are slated to come back to Earth at the end of April, according to CNN.
