The SpaceX Dragon Crew-6 mission launched at 12:34 am ET on Thursday from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Crew-6 astronauts include NASA’s Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, along with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. They will replace a US-Russian-Japanese crew that has been up there since October.

They will spend six months in the orbiting laboratory.

On February 27, 2023, NASA and SpaceX first tried to launch Crew-6 but scrubbed the attempt about 2.5 minutes before liftoff due to an issue with the ignition fluid that helps light the Falcon 9’s first-stage engines. The issue was resolved in time for Thursday’s liftoff.

NASA, the US space agency tweeted, “Liftoff! Dragon takes flight! #Crew6 launched at 12:34 am ET (0534 UTC) on March 2, lighting up the skies as the crew heads to orbit in the @SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft”, through its official Twitter handle.

The Falcon 9’s first stage separated about two minutes and 40 seconds after liftoff and began coming back down to Earth.

A little more than 12 minutes after launch, the capsule separated from the Falcon 9’s upper stage and began flying freely.

Meanwhile, the rocket’s upper stage continued powering Endeavour into orbit. The booster performed a series of engine burns, then landed on SpaceX’s drone ship.

On Friday, 3rd of March 2023 Crew-6 is scheduled to arrive at the space station at 1:17 a.m. EST and have a brief overlap with the members of Crew-5, who are scheduled to depart the ISS about six days from now.

The Crew-6 quartet will remain aboard the space station for roughly six months, and then the Crew-7 mission will launch to replace them.

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