<p>A SpaceX rocket lifted off from Florida on Sunday night carrying a crew of three US astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut on their way to the International Space Station (ISS) to begin a six-month science mission in Earth orbit.</p><p>The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket topped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule dubbed Endeavor was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, along Florida's Atlantic coast, at 10:53 pm EST (0353 GMT Monday).</p><p>A live NASA-SpaceX webcast showed the 25-story-tall rocketship ascending from the launch tower as its nine Merlin engines roared to life in billowing clouds of vapor and a reddish fireball that lit up the night sky.</p><p>The four crew members were scheduled to reach the space station early on Tuesday after a 16-hour flight, docking with the orbital laboratory some 250 miles (420 km) above Earth.</p><p>Designated Crew 8, the mission marks the eighth long-duration ISS team that NASA has flown aboard a SpaceX launch vehicle since the private rocket venture founded in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk and headquartered near Los Angeles began sending US astronauts to orbit in May 2020.</p><p>The latest ISS crew was led by mission commander Matthew Dominick, 42, a US Navy test pilot making his first trip to space, and veteran NASA astronaut Michael Barratt, 64, a physician who has logged two previous flights to the space station and two spacewalks. Barratt is serving as mission pilot.</p>.A NASA mission that collided with an asteroid didn’t just leave a dent - it reshaped the space rock.<p>Rounding out the team are fellow NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps, 53, an aerospace engineer and former technical intelligence officer for the CIA, and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, 41, a former military aircraft engineer. Both he and Epps, like Dominick, are spaceflight rookies.</p><p>Grebenkin is the latest cosmonaut to fly aboard a US spacecraft under a ride-sharing deal signed in 2022 by NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, despite heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.</p><p>Crew 8 will be welcomed aboard the space station by seven current ISS occupants - three Russians and the four astronauts of Crew 7, two from NASA, one from Japan and one from Denmark. The Crew 7 team is expected to depart the space station for a flight back to Earth about a week after Crew 8's arrival.</p><p>Crew 8 is expected to remain aboard the space station until the end of August, collectively performing about 250 experiments in the microgravity environment of the orbital platform.</p><p>The ISS, about the length of a football field and the largest human-made object in space, has been continuously operated by a US-Russian-led consortium that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.</p><p>The first hardware for the outpost was launched 25 years ago. It was conceived in part as a multinational venture designed to improve relations between Washington and Moscow following the Soviet Union's collapse and the end of Cold War rivalries that gave rise to the original US-Soviet space race in the 1950s and 1960s.</p><p>NASA has said it is committed to keeping the space station in operation for at least six more years.</p>
<p>A SpaceX rocket lifted off from Florida on Sunday night carrying a crew of three US astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut on their way to the International Space Station (ISS) to begin a six-month science mission in Earth orbit.</p><p>The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket topped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule dubbed Endeavor was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, along Florida's Atlantic coast, at 10:53 pm EST (0353 GMT Monday).</p><p>A live NASA-SpaceX webcast showed the 25-story-tall rocketship ascending from the launch tower as its nine Merlin engines roared to life in billowing clouds of vapor and a reddish fireball that lit up the night sky.</p><p>The four crew members were scheduled to reach the space station early on Tuesday after a 16-hour flight, docking with the orbital laboratory some 250 miles (420 km) above Earth.</p><p>Designated Crew 8, the mission marks the eighth long-duration ISS team that NASA has flown aboard a SpaceX launch vehicle since the private rocket venture founded in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk and headquartered near Los Angeles began sending US astronauts to orbit in May 2020.</p><p>The latest ISS crew was led by mission commander Matthew Dominick, 42, a US Navy test pilot making his first trip to space, and veteran NASA astronaut Michael Barratt, 64, a physician who has logged two previous flights to the space station and two spacewalks. Barratt is serving as mission pilot.</p>.A NASA mission that collided with an asteroid didn’t just leave a dent - it reshaped the space rock.<p>Rounding out the team are fellow NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps, 53, an aerospace engineer and former technical intelligence officer for the CIA, and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, 41, a former military aircraft engineer. Both he and Epps, like Dominick, are spaceflight rookies.</p><p>Grebenkin is the latest cosmonaut to fly aboard a US spacecraft under a ride-sharing deal signed in 2022 by NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, despite heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.</p><p>Crew 8 will be welcomed aboard the space station by seven current ISS occupants - three Russians and the four astronauts of Crew 7, two from NASA, one from Japan and one from Denmark. The Crew 7 team is expected to depart the space station for a flight back to Earth about a week after Crew 8's arrival.</p><p>Crew 8 is expected to remain aboard the space station until the end of August, collectively performing about 250 experiments in the microgravity environment of the orbital platform.</p><p>The ISS, about the length of a football field and the largest human-made object in space, has been continuously operated by a US-Russian-led consortium that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.</p><p>The first hardware for the outpost was launched 25 years ago. It was conceived in part as a multinational venture designed to improve relations between Washington and Moscow following the Soviet Union's collapse and the end of Cold War rivalries that gave rise to the original US-Soviet space race in the 1950s and 1960s.</p><p>NASA has said it is committed to keeping the space station in operation for at least six more years.</p>