Watch SpaceX launch Crew-12 astronaut mission to the International Space Station this morning

Update for 7 a.m. ET: SpaceX successfully launched four astronauts to the International Space Station on the Crew-12 mission. See video and photos of the launch here.

SpaceX will launch the latest batch of astronauts to the International Space Station early Friday morning (Feb. 13), and you can watch the action live.

The four-person Crew-12 mission is scheduled to launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Friday at 5:15 a.m. EST (1015 GMT).

You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA. Coverage will begin at 3:15 a.m. EST (0815 GMT).

a black and white rocket stands on a launch pad at night — A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company’s Dragon spacecraft on top stands vertical on the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026, ahead of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 launch. (Image credit: NASA)

If all goes according to plan, Crew-12's Crew Dragon capsule, named "Freedom," will dock with the ISS on Saturday (Feb. 14) at about 3:15 p.m. EST (2015 GMT). You can watch that milestone here at Space.com as well when the time comes.

Crew-12 consists of NASA astronauts Jessica Meir (mission commander) and Jack Hathaway (pilot), Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency (mission specialist), and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev (mission specialist).

Adenot and Hathaway are both spaceflight rookies. Crew-12 will be the second spaceflight for both Meir and Fedyaev. The four astronauts will stay aboard the ISS for about nine months — about three months longer than the normal crew rotation.

Blastoff! NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 launches to the International Space Station - YouTube

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Crew-12 will bring the ISS back up to its normal complement of seven crewmembers. The orbiting lab has been staffed with a skeleton crew of three — NASA's Chris Williams and cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev — since mid-January, when SpaceX's Crew-11 mission came back to Earth.

That departure came about a month early, due to an undisclosed medical issue with one of the Crew-11 astronauts. It was the first medical evacuation in the long history of the ISS.

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

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