SpaceX rocket carries 4-member crew toward International Space Station

Aug. 26 (UPI) -- NASA's Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station lifted off on time early Saturday morning from Kennedy Space Center in Florida with the four astronauts aboard headed for a stay at the International Space Station.

The launch came a day later than planned, with the delay caused by concerns about the Dragon spacecraft's environmental control and life support system components. Flight managers aborted the mission about 5 hours before launch time in the early hours Friday.

On Saturday, however, all systems were go, and the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the four space explorers lit up the sky in central Florida at 3:27 a.m., carrying the twice-used Crew Dragon capsule named Endurance into space.

After chasing the space station orbiting some 250 miles above Earth, the spacecraft was scheduled to dock there about 8:50 a.m. Sunday, with the astronauts entering the floating laboratory some two hours later.

The crew, American Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA, Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency, Satoshi Furukawa of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Konstantin Borisov of Russia's Roscosmos space agency, will spend six months aboard the space station, carrying out a range of scientific experiments, technology demonstrations, research and maintenance tasks.

The Crew Dragon capsule in which the four will ride previously flew NASA's Crew-3 and Crew-5 missions to and from the space station. The stage 1 booster stage of the Falcon rocket was to be jettisoned about 9 minutes after lift-off and came back to Earth at Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Minutes later, the second stage separation occurred as the Dragon spacecraft headed into orbit.

"I know just how happy the crew is right now," NASA astronaut Jessica Meir said during a live-streamed broadcast of the launch. Meir was the flight engineer for space station Expedition 61/62 in 2019.

German-born Moghbeli, 40, who hails from Baldwin, N.Y., to which she emigrated with her Iranian-born parents in the 1980s, is the mission's commander, while Mogensen will pilot the spacecraft and Borisov will serve as the flight engineer.

"SpaceX, thanks for the ride. It was awesome," Moghbeli said as the craft entered orbit. "On behalf of Andy, Satoshi, Konstantin, and I, we'd like to thank the multitude of people who led us to this unique moment."

She added: "We may have four crew members on board from four different nations ... but we're a united team with a common mission. Human spaceflight requires an unparalleled level of vigilance and rigor, and we thank all those who prepared not only us but also this truly impressive spacecraft for flight."

Aboard the space station, the new group will join the Crew-6 astronauts, NASA's Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, the United Arab Emirates' Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos' Andrey Fedyaev -- set to return to Earth aboard Dragon Endurance on Sept. 2.

Also aboard are Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin and Francisco Rubio from Roscosmos' MS-22 mission, who are in their 10th month on the space station.