Dragon Spacecraft of NASA, SpaceX Lifts Off with 4 Astronauts

The Dragon spacecraft of NASA and SpaceX was launched on Saturday with four astronauts on their way to the International Space Station.

This four-member Crew-7 mission is commanded by American Jasmin Moghbeli and includes Andreas Mogensen of Denmark, Satoshi Furukawa of Japan and Konstantin Borisov of Russia.

The Dragon spacecraft carried by a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 3:27 am (0727 GMT) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“We have liftoff!” NASA said on X.

Crew-7 is set to be the seventh routine mission to the International Space Station for Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The first one was in 2020.

NASA pays SpaceX for this service to reduce dependency on Russian rockets for astronaut transport following the end of the space shuttle program in 2011.

Crew-7 will join the seven people already aboard the ISS. Members of Crew-6 will leave for Earth a few days later.

The ISS is continuously inhabited by an international crew since 2001. The ISS will continue to operate till 2030. Then it will be decommissioned and crash into the ocean. Several private companies are working on commercial space stations to replace it.