An international crew of four astronauts launched toward the International Space Station from Florida on Friday (August 1, 2025) aboard a SpaceX rocket, beating gloomy weather to embark on a routine NASA mission that could be the first of many to last a couple months longer than usual.

The four-person astronaut crew— two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and Japanese astronaut— boarded SpaceX’s Dragon capsule sitting atop its Falcon 9 rocket at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and blasted off at 11:43 am ET (1543 GMT). They will arrive at the ISS on Saturday (August 2, 2025).