Joe Skipper, Steve Gorman

CAPE CANAVERAL FL. (Reuters). Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company was scheduled to launch NASA’s next long-duration crew early Wednesday. This included a Spacewalker turned medical doctor as well as a Martian geologist.

SpaceX, which consists of a Falcon 9 rocket and a Crew Dragon capsule called Freedom, is scheduled to liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida, at 03:52 EDT (07:00 GMT).

All going according to plan, three American astronauts will arrive at the station 17 hours later with their Italian crewmate (ESA). They’ll then begin a six month science mission that orbits approximately 250 miles (442 km) above the Earth.

NASA officials stated that forecasts indicated that there was a 95% chance for favorable weather for an early liftoff.

Kathryn Lueders is an associate NASA administrator for orbit operations. She stated to reporters that “flying with crew safely means you have to take it step by step.” “We hope that you’ll see a truly, really stunning step, and we will get our crew safely into space.”

Crew 4 will be the fourth fully-fledged ISS astronaut mission NASA has launched aboard a SpaceX spacecraft since Musk’s private rocket company, which also includes Tesla, Inc., started flying U.S. agency astronauts in 2020. SpaceX launched six human spaceflights in the last two years.

Kjell Lindgren (49), a doctor who is a certified emergency physician, and one-time flight surgeon, was assigned as crew 4 commander. He spent 141 days on orbit in 2015, his second time to the ISS.

He performed two spacewalks during that mission and was involved in more than 100 science experiments, including the “Veggie” lettuce experiment, which marked the first U.S. astronaut to eat a crop that had been grown in orbit.

Bob Hines (47), a U.S Air Force pilot test pilot and fighter pilot who is assigned to the mission, has flown more than 3500 hours in 50 aircraft types and completed 76 combat missions.

Jessica Watkins (33), a geoscientist who has made her spaceflight debut as a mission specialist, is another crew member. She earned her doctorate in studying large landslides and Mars on Earth. After graduating, she joined NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory science team to study Curiosity, a Mars rover.

Watkins, the first African American woman who will join the International Space Station’s long-duration Crew 4 mission, is the first to do so. In following in the steps of just seven Black astronauts, Watkins will board ISS for the first time since it was founded more than twenty years ago.

Samantha Cristoforetti (45), an ESA astronaut, Italian Air Force pilot, and Crew 4 completes the crew. She is slated to take command of ISS operations for the six-month period, making her Europe’s first female in this role.

Cristoforetti & Watkins were previously aquanauts together in Aquarius, the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations mission (NEEMO), in 2019.

Crew 4 will be welcomed by the seven Crew 3 occupants who will replace them. These include three American astronauts, a German ESA teammate and three Russian cosmonauts.

Two days earlier, a Houston-based team of four people organized by Axiom Space had returned from a two weeks-long mission on the ISS as its first all-private astronaut crew. Axiom Space splashed down Monday in a new SpaceX capsule.

This follows an influx of recent astrotourism flights. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic Holding Inc were the commercial space operator that launched their back-to-back suborbital flight with Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, who are both billionaires.