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“It turns out Friday the 13th is a very lucky day,” SpaceX Launch Control radioed once the astronauts reached orbit.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The crew of four astronauts destined for the International Space Station lifted off before dawn Friday from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The request to send a new crew to the ISS for a likely eight- or nine-month stint in orbit was expedited to help fill vacancies left due to NASA’s first medical evacuation last month. The four astronauts on their way to orbit will bring the ISS back to full staff.
Crew-12 comprises Americans Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, France’s Sophie Adenot, and Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev. They will join three other astronauts who kept the space station running the past month.
The crew were cleared to launch right on time aboard their SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, at 5:15 a.m. EST.
“Go Falcon. Go Dragon. And Godspeed, Crew-12,” mission control said after the countdown to liftoff.
“It turns out Friday the 13th is a very lucky day,” SpaceX Launch Control radioed once the astronauts reached orbit.
“That was quite a ride,” Meir, the crew’s commander, replied.
NASA did not order any additional checkups for the crew ahead of liftoff, and no new diagnostic equipment was packed. An ultrasound machine already up there for research went into overdrive on Jan. 7 when used on the ailing crew member, the Associated Press reports.
NASA has not revealed the ill astronaut’s identity or health issue. All four returning astronauts went straight to the hospital after splashing down in the Pacific near San Diego.
It was the first time in 65 years of human spaceflight that NASA cut short a mission for medical reasons.
The voyage marks a milestone in Adenot’s and Hathaway’s aeronautic careers, as it’s the first time either has been to space. Adenot is the second French woman to launch to space.
Meir and Fedyaev are making their second station trip.
On her first mission in 2019, Meir took part in the first all-female spacewalk. The other half of that spacewalk, Christina Koch, is among the four Artemis II astronauts waiting to fly around the moon as early as March. A ship-to-ship radio linkup is planned between the two crews, the Associated Press reports.
Meir wasn’t sure astronauts would return to the moon during her career.
“Now we’re right here on the precipice of the Artemis II mission,” she said ahead of liftoff. “The fact that they will be in space at the same time as us … it’s so cool to be an astronaut now, it’s so exciting.”
Crew-12 will carry out a science mission of studies and experiments to help teach us how to live in space “while making life better back on Earth,” NASA said of the launch.
In preparation for trips to the moon and even Mars, the crew will be testing a new filter designed to turn drinking water into emergency IV fluid, trying out a new ultrasound system that relies on artificial intelligence and augmented reality instead of on-the-ground experts, and perform ultrasound scans on their jugular veins in a blood-clot study.
The crew will also demonstrate their moon-landing skills in a simulated test.
SpaceX launched the latest crew from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Elon Musk’s company is preparing its neighboring Kennedy Space Center launch pad for the super-sized Starships, which NASA needs to land astronauts on the moon.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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