Nine Merlin engines roared to life at 11:43 a.m. EDT (1543 UTC) and the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sped away through the cloudy skies above Florida’s Space Coast. Less than 10 minutes after liftoff, the Crew Dragon spacecraft, named ‘Endeavour’, flew free from the rocket’s second stage.
“I have no emotions, but joy right now. That was absolutely transcendent, the ride of a lifetime,” said NASA astronaut and Crew-11 commander Zena Cardman, shortly after entering the microgravity environment for the first time in her career. “Thank you, this has been an incredible honor.”
Cardman was previously scheduled to fly as the commander of the Crew-9 mission, which launched in September 2024. She, along with NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson, were pulled from that mission to make room for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to return on Dragon from the ISS after issues arose with their Starliner spacecraft.
The development delays from Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft also affected two other members of the Crew-11 mission. NASA astronaut Mike Fincke and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kimiya Yui were both training as crew members on the Starliner-1 mission, the first operational crew rotation mission for that vehicle.
Instead, the duo were reassigned to Crew-11 in the Dragon Pilot and Mission Specialist 1 positions. For Fincke, a veteran of Soyuz and Shuttle flights, this mission is his first time in space after a 14-year gap. He was a member of another Endeavour crew: Shuttle mission STS-134.
“Boy, it’s great to be back in orbit again!” Fincke exclaimed. “Thank you to SpaceX and NASA for getting us here. What a ride! And Zena and Oleg, let me be the second to welcome you to your first orbit around beautiful planet Earth.”
Crew-11 is the second flight to the space station for Yui. He previously launched on a Soyuz spacecraft in 2015 for a long-duration mission onboard the orbiting outpost.
The other mission specialist, Roscosmos cosmonaut, Oleg Platonov is also enjoying his first trip to space. He was previously assigned as a backup crew member for a Russian Soyuz mission, but was pulled from a future Soyuz flight assignment by Roscosmos’ medical board.
The four-member crew will spend a minimum of six and potentially as many as eight months on the ISS before returning for a splashdown off the coast of California. The Dragon Endeavour spacecraft is scheduled to dock with the space station at 3 a.m. EDT (0700 UTC) on Saturday, Aug. 2.
