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After a day-long delay, NASA's SpaceX Crew 7 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida early morning local time today. The mission is flying a crew of four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), and it is the first time that each crew member is from a different country. SpaceX and NASA had delayed the mission initially slated to lift off yesterday to study data from the Dragon spacecraft's life support systems. Following a decision to proceed earlier, the SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off at 3:27 am EDT earlier today, and soon afterward, the Dragon's nose cone opened to start the second phase of the astronauts' journey to the space station.

SpaceX & NASA Continue Succesful Partnership Of Crewed Flights To ISS

Today's mission marks the eighth flight of SpaceX's Crew Dragon and the seventh operational mission of NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP). The Dragon is the only operational CCP vehicle, as it brings back crew launch capability to U.S. soil. Launching astronauts from America improves the speed at which NASA can conduct ISS missions and speeds up the progress of scientific investigations on the ISS.

The Crew 7 will feature some of the most important scientific investigations on the ISS as they will be one of the building blocks of NASA's long-duration crewed missions to Mars. Two experiments will investigate changes to the human body during long-duration spaceflight and monitor crew sleeping patterns in space, and compare them to baseline readings on Earth. Physiology and sleep are the two most important aspects of human performance as they travel in space since the lack of gravity affects the human body in numerous ways - several of which remain unexplored as humans have rarely ventured outside the ISS' microgravity conditions.

Liftoff of Crew-7! pic.twitter.com/fvMpbvDPjU

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 26, 2023

Crew Dragon's journey from the launch pad at Kennedy to the space station involves several stages and burns. The spacecraft has its own thrusters that fire up after its nose cone has opened to align it with the ISS. The first set of these burns are called phase burns, which make the Dragon raise its altitude to match the station's altitude, after which the spacecraft chases the ISS before catching up and docking.

The Crew 7's flight time will be roughly 29 hours as the ship is expected to dock to the ISS tomorrow. The astronauts on board are expected to spend six months on the station, and in less than a week after their arrival, the Crew 6 crew will mark the end of their mission to return to Earth.

A new mission docking to the ISS often marks a rare occasion when three of SpaceX's spacecraft are docked with the orbiting laboratory. After the phase burn is complete, the astronauts remove their suits and put them on again before docking to the station. The suits are pressurized and designed to keep the astronauts healthy in case their vehicle loses pressure during its flight.

Before today's mission, NASA and SpaceX worked with data from SpaceX's previous cargo mission to the space station. This mission saw some of the valves on board the Cargo Dragon malfunction during orbit, and before Crew 7 lifted off, the pair confirmed that the issue had been investigated and resolved.