A new international crew is en route to the ISS for the eleventh regular U.S. crew rotation mission for NASA.

Their stay is expected to last approximately six months. A four-person crew, including a Russian, launched by NASA and SpaceX is en route to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, August ^1. The two American astronauts, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Kimiya Yui of Japan, and Oleg Platonov of Russia, blasted off at 11:43 a.m. local time (5:43 p.m. Paris time) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the Falcon 9 rocket.

“It’s an honor, a privilege, and a choice for us to be part of something that’s so much bigger than humans, but it’s humans that make this company great,” Zena Cardman said shortly before the launch.

The Crew Dragon capsule, named "Endeavour" and placed atop the rocket, which will carry the crew has already been used for four previous NASA missions, as well as one private mission.

The four passengers this time are members of Crew 11, the eleventh regularly scheduled rotation of the American crew to the ISS carried out by SpaceX for NASA. NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, which operate jointly on the ISS, have established an astronaut exchange program, each taking turns transporting a crew member from the other country.

During its six-month mission, Crew-11 will simulate lunar landing scenarios that could occur near the lunar south pole as part of the U.S.-led Artemis program to return to the Moon. They will also test the effects of gravity on astronauts' ability to pilot spacecraft, including future lunar landers.

Crew-11 also has on board fruit, Armenian pomegranates, which will be compared to a control batch left on Earth in order to study the influence of microgravity on crop growth.

Continuously inhabited since 2000, the ISS flying laboratory serves as a vital testbed for space exploration research, particularly for potential missions to Mars.

A model of international cooperation bringing together Europe, Japan, the United States, and Russia, the ISS began assembly in 1998. It was scheduled for retirement in 2024, but NASA estimated it could operate until 2030. Dmitry Bakanov, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, spoke this week with Sean Duffy, NASA's acting administrator, about the station's future. It was the first face-to-face meeting with his American counterpart since 2018.