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Jun 30, 2023

SpaceX Crew

SpaceX also test-fired its Falcon 9 rocket to prep for the liftoff. SpaceX and NASA are checking off boxes ahead of the company's next crewed launch to the International Space Station, which is

SpaceX also test-fired its Falcon 9 rocket to prep for the liftoff.

SpaceX and NASA are checking off boxes ahead of the company's next crewed launch to the International Space Station, which is scheduled for Friday (Aug. 25).

The four astronauts of that mission, which is called Crew-7, along with their associated SpaceX and NASA teams, have "completed a full rehearsal of launch day activities," SpaceX wrote via X (formerly Twitter) early Tuesday morning (Aug. 22).

That post featured three photos: One showed the spaceflyers inside their Crew Dragon capsule Endurance, which is sitting atop a Falcon 9 rocket at Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Another saw the crew in front of the Falcon 9-Endurance stack on the pad, and the third was taken in Pad 39A's crew access arm, the entry point into Endurance.

Related: SpaceX Crew-7 astronaut plans to snap aurora photos on the ISS

And, in another Tuesday morning X post, SpaceX announced that it had conducted a successful "static fire" test of Crew-7's Falcon 9. (In static fires, a rocket's first-stage engines are briefly ignited while the vehicle remains anchored to the ground.)

So everything remains on track for a Crew-7 liftoff from Pad 39A on Friday at 3:50 a.m. EDT (0750 GMT). You can watch the launch live here at Space.com when the time comes.

Crew-7 will send four spaceflyers to the International Space Station (ISS) for a roughly six-month stay.

Those four astronauts are NASA's Jasmin Moghbeli, the Crew-7 commander; Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency, who will serve as pilot; and mission specialists Konstantin Borisov and Satoshi Furukawa, of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, respectively.

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Another Crew Dragon capsule is already docked to the ISS — Endeavour, which flew four astronauts up on SpaceX's Crew-6 mission. The Crew-6 quartet will depart for Earth about five days after Crew-7 docks, a milestone scheduled to occur roughly 24 hours after launch.

And the ISS will get another visitor before Crew-7 lifts off, if all goes according to plan. A robotic Russian Progress cargo craft is scheduled to launch Tuesday evening and arrive at the orbiting lab late Thursday night (Aug. 24).

This story was updated at 8:15 a.m. EDT Aug. 24 to reflect a new launch time.

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Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

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