SpaceX's next astronaut launch is just around the corner.
The company just launched the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule that will fly Crew-8, SpaceX's next mission to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA.
Crew-8 is scheduled to lift off from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday (March 1) at 12:04 a.m. EDT (0504 GMT). You can watch it live here on Space.com when the time comes.
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Crew-8 will send NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barrett, Janet Epps and Russian astronaut Alexander Grebenkin to the International Space Station for a six-month stay. Dominic will be the commander of Crew-8, Barrett will be the pilot, and Epps and Grebenkin will serve as mission specialists.
The quartet will replace the four astronauts on SpaceX's Crew-7 mission, who are scheduled to depart the ISS about a week after Crew-8's arrival.
As its name suggests, Crew-8 will be the eighth operational astronaut mission that SpaceX has flown to the International Space Station for NASA.
The space agency has signed a similar contract with aerospace giant Boeing, which it plans to fulfill with a capsule called Starliner. Boeing is preparing for its first crewed mission with the Starliner spacecraft, a test flight for two astronauts to the International Space Station scheduled for launch in mid-April.
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