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SpaceX launched its latest crew of four astronauts to orbit early Saturday morning, sending them en route to the International Space Station for a six-month stay in space.
The crew, traveling inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, are slated to reach and dock with the ISS in the early morning hours on Sunday.
NASA and SpaceX had originally hoped to launch Friday, but chose to call off the launch hours prior in order to take more time to analyze the Dragon’s life-support system.
Called Crew-7, this mission marks SpaceX’s seventh operational human spaceflight mission to the space station under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. It’s also the eleventh time SpaceX has launched humans to orbit.
The four astronauts of SpaceX’s Crew-6 mission, who have been living on the ISS since March, will spend the next week welcoming the Crew-7 astronauts to the station before returning to Earth in their own Crew Dragon capsule, tentatively scheduled for Sept. 1.