SpaceX Falcon 9 blasts off with crew of 8 Astronauts for NASA

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida on Sunday night, carrying a diverse international crew on a six-month science mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule, named Endeavor, lifted off at 10:53 p.m. EST, lighting up the night sky with billowing clouds of vapor and a reddish fireball from its nine Merlin engines.

The four-member Crew 8 team includes three U.S. astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut, marking the eighth long-duration ISS mission flown by SpaceX since the company founded by billionaire Elon Musk began ferrying U.S. astronauts to orbit in May 2020. The crew is led by mission commander Matthew Dominick, 42, a U.S. Navy test pilot on his first spaceflight, and veteran NASA astronaut Michael Barratt, 64, serving as mission pilot.

Joining them are NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps, 53, an aerospace engineer and former CIA technical intelligence officer, and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, 41, a former military aircraft engineer. Both Epps and Grebenkin are making their space debuts. Grebenkin's presence reflects the ongoing ride-sharing agreement between NASA and Roscosmos, despite heightened tensions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

After a 16-hour journey, Crew 8 is scheduled to dock with the ISS early Tuesday, joining the seven current occupants from Crew 7. The incumbent crew, composed of three Russians, two NASA astronauts, one Japanese, and one Danish astronaut, is expected to return to Earth about a week after Crew 8's arrival.

During their stint aboard the orbital laboratory, Crew 8 will conduct approximately 250 experiments in the microgravity environment. The ISS, a multinational venture involving the U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan, and 11 European countries, has been continuously occupied for over two decades.

Conceived in part as a means to improve post-Cold War relations between Washington and Moscow, the ISS represents a continuation of the space cooperation that emerged from the U.S.-Soviet space race of the 1950s and 1960s. As the largest human-made object in space, the ISS has been a symbol of international collaboration, with NASA committed to keeping it operational for at least six more years.