The Crew-12 mission, SpaceX’s 20th human spaceflight, launched at 5:15 AM Eastern on February 13 from Cape Canaveral in Florida. It’s expected to dock with the International Space Station today, February 14, at 3:15 PM, and you can watch the event below as it happens. By the time the mission’s Dragon capsule docks with the ISS, it will have traveled approximately 34 hours since lift off. Inside are NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency’s Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
The four spacefarers are joining the three remaining passengers onboard the ISS after Crew-11 flew back to Earth a month earlier than planned. If you’ll recall, NASA made the decision to cut their mission short after one of the crew members had a medical issue that instruments on the ISS aren’t capable of diagnosing. While the crew member was stable, the agency decided to bring the whole mission home out of an abundance of caution.
Crew-12 will be staying on the ISS for eight months and will conduct a number of scientific experiments, including ones related to human health and ones meant to advance technologies for future missions to the moon and Mars. They will study how pneumonia-causing bacteria can lead to long-term heart damage, for instance, and will also look into how a person’s physical characteristics can affect blood flow during spaceflight. NASA’s live coverage for the docking starts at 1:15 PM.
