KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — The next four humans in the parade of SpaceX launches from the Space Coast are set to fly to the International Space Station at a launch just after noon Thursday.

The Crew-11 mission flying on a Falcon 9 rocket is set to lift off from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A at 12:09 p.m. carrying NASA astronaut and commander Zena Cardman, NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov.

The quartet, who arrived to KSC on Saturday, will be riding in the Crew Dragon Endeavour making its fleet-leading sixth trip to space. They donned their spacesuits after 8 a.m. at the Neil Armstrong Operations & Checkout Building ahead of walkout and the ride over the launch pad. Their black Teslas for the ride out feature individual license plates reading “Live,” “Laugh” and “Launch.”

“This is a really important mission,” said NASA Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich during a flight readiness press conference Thursday. “We worked very hard with SpaceX to complete all the reuse activities for this vehicle. We had certified the vehicles – the Dragons – for only five flights. Now, we’ve completed all that work, and we’re really ready to go.”

It was the same Crew Dragon that flew the first astronauts for SpaceX back in 2020, and now part of a stable of five crew-capable Dragons. With Crew-11’s launch, SpaceX will have flown 74 humans across 19 missions in just over five years.

The first-stage booster for this mission is making its third flight and will aim for what will be SpaceX’s final use of Landing Zone 1 at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

SpaceX warns of the possibility that one or more sonic booms could be heard across parts of Central Florida including Brevard, Orange, Osceola, Indian River, Seminole, Volusia, Polk, St. Lucie, and Okeechobee counties. The last use of the landing zone during the Axiom Space Ax-4 launch had reports of the boom heard as far as Lake County.

Space Launch Delta 45’s weather squadron forecasts a 90% chance for good conditions at the launch site, and weather is forecast to be within safety margins along the ascent corridor off the U.S. East Coast that needs to be good in the event of an emergency abort. There are backup options on Aug. 1-3, but weather gets worst along that corridor in the next few days.

After liftoff, the crew have a 39-hour trip to the space station with docking planned for around 3 a.m. Saturday. They go to relieve the Crew-10 members who have been on board since mid-March, but won’t undock until they complete a short handover period during with the space station population will grow from seven to 11. The Crew-10 return is slated for around Aug. 5 with a return off the coast of California.

Crew-11 will be on the station for at least six months, but NASA could stretch the mission to as long as eight months.

For its members, Cardman and Platonov are rookies while Yui is making his second trip having flown to the station a decade ago, and Fincke is making his fourth trip to space having last flown to the station as part STS-134, the last flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour, as well as two previous missions on Soyuz spacecraft.

Cardman had originally been tapped to command the Crew-9 mission, but was bumped after NASA needed space on board to allow for the return flight to the two Boeing Starliner astronauts that were left behind on the station when their spacecraft was sent home without crew because of safety concerns.

Fincke and Yui had both been training to fly future crewed missions of Starliner, but were shifted to this SpaceX mission as Boeing’s beleaguered spacecraft continues to face delays.

With their arrival to the station, the orbiting laboratory will have welcomed 290 people from 26 nations. The station will mark 25 years of continuous human presence in November having began Expedition 1 in 2020. The Crew-11 crew will become of Expedition 73 when they arrive and continue on as part of Expedition 74 that begins in November when the next replacement crew from Russia arrives.

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