A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket pierced the pre-dawn Florida sky on Friday, turning darkness into daylight as it carried four astronauts toward orbit. The brief, violent ascent—nine minutes from Cape Canaveral to the edge of space—delivered NASA commander Jessica Meir, pilot Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev on their way to the International Space Station. They're expected to dock Saturday afternoon.
For Meir and Fedyaev, this is familiar territory. Meir last visited the station in 2019, when she and NASA astronaut Christina Koch made history conducting the first all-female spacewalk—seven hours outside the station replacing a broken battery charger. Fedyaev has also been before. But for Hathaway and Adenot, this launch marks their first journey to space, a threshold moment that turns years of training into the real thing.
The crew arrives at a station that's been running lean. With only three people aboard since last month, the orbital laboratory has been operating at reduced capacity. Normally, new crews overlap with departing ones for several days—a handoff period where knowledge transfers and relationships form before one team heads home. That didn't happen this time. NASA's previous mission, Crew-11, left a month early in January due to a crew member's serious but stable health condition. It was the first medical evacuation in the space station's 26-year history.
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Start Your News DetoxOver the next eight months, Meir's team will restore the station to full staffing and tackle the work that keeps the orbiting laboratory running: conducting experiments, maintaining equipment, and advancing the science that depends on microgravity. The rotation is a reminder that the space station, despite its remote location 250 miles above Earth, operates like any other workplace—with schedules, handovers, and the occasional disruption that forces adjustment.
With the crew now en route, the station's reduced operations are about to expand again.
