With Crew-13, Jessica Watkins became the first Black woman to lead a mission into space.
Key takeaways
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a four-person crew, including the first Black woman to lead a mission, launched from Cape Canaveral and is en route to the International Space Station.
- The crew includes Jessica Watkins, a 38-year-old geologist and astronaut, and three international crew members.
- The mission, designated Crew-13, is the 13th crew rotation mission launched by SpaceX under a contract with NASA.
- The crew is expected to reach the ISS in about eight hours, the fastest-ever launch-to-docking transit by a US spacecraft.
- SpaceX plans to retire the Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket around 2030, with nine more Crew Dragon flights remaining in its backlog.
Summarised automatically by AI from the original article by Ars Technica. AI can make mistakes, so check the original for details.
A four-person crew rocketed into orbit Thursday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, heading for a six-month expedition on the International Space Station.
Riding a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft, the four crew members departed from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral at 11:10 am EDT (15:10 UTC) Thursday. Nine minutes later, they were in orbit to begin closing in on the space station for docking Thursday evening.
The launch was delayed from mid-September to replace a balky valve in the Dragon spacecraft's propulsion system, a task that involved cutting into a propellant line inside the ship to swap out a faulty component.
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