SpaceX and NASA Launch Crew-12 to Restore Full Staffing at International Space Station

A SpaceX capsule carrying four astronauts blasted off from Cape Canaveral early Friday, heading for the International Space Station and restoring the orbiting lab to full strength after weeks of running with a reduced crew. The Crew-12 mission lifted off just after 5:15 a.m. ET aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The Dragon spacecraft is set to dock with the station on Saturday afternoon, attaching to the Harmony module.

On board are NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. Adenot is only the second French woman to travel to space, and Hathaway is flying for the first time, while Meir and Fedyaev are returning to the station. During her 2019 mission, Meir participated in the first all-female spacewalk. They will join NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, bringing the station back to its usual seven-person team.

NASA pushed to get the new crew into orbit after the previous mission, Crew-11, was cut short last month due to a medical emergency for the first time in 65 years of human spaceflight. The identity and condition of the affected astronaut were not disclosed, though officials said that the crew member was stable after returning to Earth.

“NASA was ready. The team responded quickly and professionally, as did the teams across the agency, working closely with our commercial partners and executed a very safe return,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at the time. “This is exactly why we train, and this is NASA at its finest.”

The early return left the station staffed by just three astronauts, forcing NASA to delay spacewalks and scale back research. Although three-person crews were once common before SpaceX began routine astronaut transport flights, the agency says a larger team is key to maximizing science aboard the $3 billion-a-year laboratory.

Crew-12 won’t get the usual in-orbit handover with their predecessors because of the emergency departure. Instead, they debriefed Crew-11 on the ground. “We ran into them several times and had a little bit of a debrief so they could pass along some pertinent things,” Meir said before the launch.

The new arrivals are scheduled to spend eight to nine months in orbit. Their research agenda includes studying bacteria linked to pneumonia, examining how spaceflight affects blood flow and cardiovascular health, and testing technology that could turn drinking water into emergency IV fluid for deep-space missions. They’ll also trial an artificial intelligence-assisted ultrasound system and run a simulated lunar landing to see how sudden gravity shifts affect the body and mind.

Looking ahead, NASA sees the station as a stepping stone to the Moon and beyond. “I, like a lot of space enthusiasts, dream of the day where we have multiple commercial space stations in low-Earth orbit,” Isaacman said during a Senate hearing in December. “But I think in order for that to be a financially viable model, we have to absolutely maximize the remaining life of the International Space Station — get the highest potential science and research to the space.”