Four astronauts from across the globe are set to blast off to the International Space Station (ISS) in a matter of hours.
Weather permitting, SpaceX and NASA will be ready for lift-off on Friday at 10.49am BST (5.49am EDT) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
You can watch the launch on SpaceX’s website and its YouTube channel.
The Crew Dragon capsule has already flown to the ISS on three occasions, two of which were test flights.
It is only the second crewed spaceflight with astronauts on the Crew Dragon, and the first launch with two international partners as part of NASA’s commercial crew programme in collaboration with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
If all goes according to plan, the four astronauts will blast off aboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour, strapped to SpaceX’s iconic Falcon 9 rocket on Friday.
Follow along with launch activities and get more information about the mission at NASA’s official Crew 2 page
(Image: AUBREY GEMIGNANI/UPI/REX/Shutterstock)
US Space Force 45th Weather Squadron continues to predict a 90 per cent chance of favourable weather conditions at the launch pad on Friday.
The Falcon 9 previously successfully launched the Crew-1 mission last May astronauts Bob Behnken and Douglas Hurley aboard the Dragon.
European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet is set to accompany NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur and Jaxa (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, bound for ISS in Friday’s Crew-2 mission.
(Image: Pat Benic/UPI/REX/Shutterstock)
It is Pesquet’s second ISS journey, and during the final month of his stay he will be commander of the ISS.
The mission will see a number of scientific experiments conducted on the ISS covering human research, biology, fluid physics, material sciences and environmental sciences.
The instantaneous launch window originally opened at 11.11 BST on Thursday but the weather conditions were too poor, and the mission is now pinning its hopes on the Friday backup launch time.
(Image: Pat Benic/UPI/REX/Shutterstock)
After successfully docking at the space station, the astronauts of Crew-2 will join the Expedition 65 crew aboard the orbital outpost, including the Crew-1 astronauts still aboard.
After an approximate six-month stay, Dragon and her Crew-2 astronauts will depart from the ISS no earlier than October 31 for return to Earth and splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida.
The Crew-1 astronauts are targeted for return in late April or early May.
You can watch the launch on a SpaceX live stream which will be up and running on its website four hours before launch time on Friday, or via its YouTube channel here.