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SpaceX is set to launch four people to the International Space Station from Florida on Wednesday, as Elon Musk’s company keeps up a steady pace of crewed missions.
Known as Crew-5, the mission for NASA will bring the group up to the ISS for a six-month stay in orbit. The mission is SpaceX’s fifth operational crew launch for NASA to date, and the company’s eighth human spaceflight in just over two years.
The Crew-5 mission will bring the number of astronauts SpaceX has launched to 30, including both government and private missions.
Crew-5 is scheduled to liftoff at 12:00 p.m. ET, beginning an estimated 29-hour journey to dock with the ISS.
SpaceX is launching the astronauts in its Crew Dragon capsule called Endurance, on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. Both the rocket and capsule are reusable.
The Endurance is flying to space for a second time – having flown the Crew-3 mission to and from the ISS in the past year.
Crew-5 carries four astronauts — two American, one Japanese and one Russian — NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina.
NASA made a “seat swap” agreement with Roscosmos to fly Kikina, making her both the first Russian cosmonaut to fly with SpaceX and the first to launch on a U.S. spacecraft since 2002.
SpaceX developed its Crew Dragon spacecraft and fine-tuned its Falcon 9 rocket under NASA’s competitive Commercial Crew program, competing against Boeing’s Starliner capsule. But Boeing’s capsule remains in development, with costly delays pushing back the start of operational Starliner flights.
Both of NASA’s astronauts flying Wednesday, Cassada and Mann, were reassigned from Boeing to SpaceX in a rare move by the space agency last year.
SpaceX has now won contracts for 14 NASA crew missions, to Boeing’s six.