OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
3:21 PM – Friday, August 1, 2025
A team of four international astronauts have boarded the Dragon capsule for SpaceX’s most recently launched rocket, the Falcon 9.
The rocket launched on Friday at 11:43 a.m. ET from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
It should arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) at around 3 a.m. ET on Saturday after a 16-hour excursion. This is their second attempt to launch, having encountered bad weather on the first run on Thursday.
Senior Russian Space officials attended the first launch attempt, including Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov, who left town after the unfortunate delay on Thursday.
The crew onboard for the mission, Crew-11, includes two NASA astronauts, Zena Cardman and Michael Fincke, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui.
Cardman had been cut from a SpaceX mission last year to accommodate the safe return of two astronauts who were stranded at the ISS due to concerns over the Boeing Starliner capsule that was first supposed to take them home. She will serve as the flight commander for the current trip.
“I have no emotion but joy right now. That was absolutely transcendent. Ride of a lifetime,” Cardman said once they’d reached orbit.
Fincke, who serves as Cardman’s co-pilot, last ventured into space in 2011 aboard a NASA space shuttle mission.
“Boy, it’s great to be back in orbit again,” Finche declared over the radio.
The mission will relieve the current ISS crew that arrived in March, ensuring that staffing on the station is uninterrupted for its continuous scientific research and operations.
The typical mission to the ISS lasts six months before a crew rotation.
This mission may signal a strategic shift in U.S. spaceflight operations, potentially extending standard crew durations aboard the ISS from six to eight months. If implemented, the current crew could remain in orbit until April of next year. The extension is designed not only to accommodate NASA’s increasingly constrained budget but also to synchronize more effectively with the mission timelines of Russian cosmonauts.
Moreover, the mission underscores the enduring collaboration among NASA, Roscosmos, and JAXA, serving as a broader symbol of sustained diplomatic and scientific partnership among the United States, Russia, and Japan.
According to NASA, budgetary constraints have impacted mission planning, prompting the agency to consider reducing crew sizes from four to three members. President Donald Trump has proposed significant cuts to NASA’s funding, with a fiscal year 2026 budget request submitted in May outlining a reduction from nearly $25 billion to approximately $19 billion—a decrease of roughly 25%.
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