A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Crew Dragon spacecraft and its crew is scheduled to lift off from Space Launch Complex-40 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Saturday at 1:17 p.m. EDT (1717 GMT). You can watch the liftoff — the first crewed launch ever from SLC-40 — live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA.
Crew-9, the ninth crew rotation mission for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, includes NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov, a cosmonaut with the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The duo are headed to the International Space Station (ISS) for a roughly five-month stay; their mission will conclude in February, when they return to Earth along with NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft generally carries four astronauts for NASA crew rotation missions. While NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson were originally included in the Crew-9 roster, they were removed to leave room to bring home Williams and Wilmore, who launched to the space station in June on Boeing’s Starliner capsule for an expected eight-day stay.
But Starliner experienced thruster issues, and NASA extended the capsule’s time at the ISS to study the problem. The agency eventually decided to bring the capsule down uncrewed, which occurred on Sept. 7; Williams and Wilmore remained aboard the ISS.
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