The US space agency NASA and SpaceX announced the launch of a new mission to rotate crews from the US Florida platform to the International Space Station.
According to a statement by the agency, the mission, codenamed Crew-9, will transport NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos astronaut Alexander Gorbunov to the International Space Station. It is the ninth crew rotation mission with SpaceX within the crew program. Commercial for NASA.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was launched with the crew on board a Dragon spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida yesterday evening.
NASA indicated that the two astronauts on the Crew-9 mission will conduct more than 200 scientific investigations, including studies of blood clotting, the effects of humidity on plants grown in space, and vision changes in astronauts.
The spacecraft is expected to return to Earth next February carrying the Crew-9 astronauts, as well as NASA astronauts Sonny Williams and Butch Wilmore, who went to the station in June aboard the Starliner spacecraft.