SpaceX launches Crew-12 astronauts to short-staffed International Space Station. ‘We have left the Earth, but the Earth has not left us.’

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A quartet of astronauts have reached orbit and are on their way to support the skeleton crew of three left behind after the first-ever medical evacuation from the International Space Station (ISS).

SpaceX launched the Crew-12 mission this morning here from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sending four astronauts to the ISS for an eight-month stay. The Crew Dragon “Freedom” lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40) at 5:15 a.m. EST (1015 GMT) this morning (Feb. 13), carrying NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev into low Earth orbit.

“That was quite a ride,” Meir radioed to Mission Control after reaching orbit. “We have left the Earth, but the Earth has not left us.”

The launch was delayed two days due to high winds and other bad weather along its flight path, but it still came a bit earlier than originally planned. NASA and SpaceX had originally targeted Feb. 15 for the liftoff but moved it up due to the early departure of the Crew-11 mission, which returned to Earth on Jan. 15 to deal with an astronaut medical issue. (NASA has not disclosed the identity of the astronaut or the nature of the issue, citing privacy concerns.)

Falcon 9 flights also briefly paused after a Feb. 2 Starlink mission that saw the rocket’s upper stage fail to complete a planned deorbit burn after SpaceX implemented a new engine chill procedure for the third burn of its engine, prompting an investigation overseen by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA cleared Falcon 9 to return to flight on Feb. 6, with Crew-12 remaining unaffected on SpaceX’s launch manifest.

“I really want to stress that what occurred on Starlink is unique to Starlink. We don’t do three burns with true missions,” Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president for Build and Flight Reliability, said during a prelaunch Crew-12 press briefing Feb. 9. “We didn’t have to change anything [about Crew-12’s flight profile] based on what we learned from the Starlink mission.”

Crew-12 was the second-ever crewed flight to launch from SLC-40 and the first mission to use SpaceX’s new landing zone at that pad, dubbed LZ-40. SpaceX’s previous crewed missions have primarily launched from Launch Complex-39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, which is a few miles up the coast from the Space Force station. But recent work at LC-39A has prompted SpaceX to move all Falcon 9 launches to SLC-40 going forward.

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The company recently removed the crew access arm on the tower at LC-39A and is continuing construction at the pad to support its new Starship rocket, which recently cleared an environmental review for future launches from the Space Coast. The company will continue launching Falcon Heavy missions from LC-39A and is expected to complete construction to support Starship this year.

The Falcon 9 booster carrying Crew-12 to space executed a main engine cutoff about 2.5 minutes after liftoff today as planned and separated from the rocket’s upper stage. The booster, designated B1101, performed a retrograde burn and successfully returned to Earth, landing at LZ-40.

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The Falcon 9’s upper stage, meanwhile, continued its course into orbit and separated from Freedom after an orbital insertion burn. The Crew-12 astronauts will spend just over a day catching up to the ISS, where they’ll begin a stint on the orbital lab that’s expected to last through October. Rotations aboard the space station typically last about six months, but Crew-12 will have some extra time in orbit.

This will be the second mission to the ISS for Meir and Fedyaev and the first for Hathaway and Adenot, the latter of whom is the first of her class of astronauts to launch to space.

“We are really excited to see our new generation of astronauts getting their first experience in space,” Andreas Mogensen, leader of ESA’s Human Exploration Group, said during the Feb. 9 briefing.

During the quartet’s time in space, they will continue research into microgravity’s effects on human physiology and perform station maintenance, including two spacewalks that were postponed after the emergence of the Crew-11 medical situation.

Now that it’s in orbit, Crew-12’s Freedom spacecraft will spend about 32 hours chasing down the ISS. The capsule is scheduled to dock to the station’s Harmony module around 3:15 p.m. EST (2015 GMT) on Saturday (Feb. 14).

Editor’s note: Visit Space.com on for live Crew-12 docking coverage on Saturday, Feb. 14. Live coverage begins at 1:15 p.m. EST (1815 GMT).