On the company’s Crew-8 mission for NASA, SpaceX is set to launch three astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut to the International Space Station (ISS) this week.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour, carrying the spacecraft of the crew members, will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida’s historic Launch Complex-39A atop a Falcon 9 rocket. As of right now, liftoff is planned to occur on Saturday, March 2 at 11:16 p.m. EST (03:16 GMT on March 3). The launch was supposed to happen early on Friday, March 1st, but inclement weather caused a delay.

NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick (mission commander), Michael Barratt (mission pilot), Jeanette Epps (mission specialist), and Alexander Grebenkin (mission specialist) of Roscosmos are the members of Crew 8. During their almost half-year stay in the orbital laboratory, the four members of the team will engage in more than 200 scientific projects and assist with space station upkeep.

Space.com will host NASA’s live coverage of the Crew-8 launch on Saturday starting at 7:15 p.m. EST (00:15 GMT on March 3).

Checkpoints along the way, starting when Falcon 9’s main booster is returned to SpaceX’s landing zone at Cape Canaveral, will be covered during Crew-8’s journey to orbit. The coverage will conclude with the release of Endeavour from Falcon 9’s second stage. The Crew Dragon coverage will then transition to an audio-only feed until the start of the rendezvous and docking broadcast after the spacecraft’s orbital entry.

NASA is scheduled to have a post-launch press conference around two hours following the rocket’s departure. NASA’s Steve Stich and Joel Montalbano, programme managers for the ISS and commercial crew, together with SpaceX’s Sarah Walker, director of Dragon mission management, will be present during the early-morning mission check-in.

As the manager of the ISS programme, this is Montalbano’s last crewed mission. Montalbano has been appointed to the position of deputy associate administrator of space operations at NASA, continuing his career there. Dana Weigel, a woman, will take over as the ISS programme manager on April 7, according to a NASA announcement.

After entering orbit, Crew-8 will take slightly over 15 hours to reach the International Space Station.

On Sunday, March 3, at 11:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT), rendezvous coverage is planned to start, almost 2.5 hours before docking is anticipated to occur. The Harmony module of the station will be the destination of Crew Dragon Endeavor’s port of entry. About two hours after hatch opening, which is a long-standing custom whenever astronauts first arrive at the International Space Station (ISS), members of the recently arrived Crew-8 will assemble with the current space station crew for a welcome ceremony.

The astronauts of Crew-7 will soon depart the station with the arrival of Crew-8. In August, astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA, Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (ESA), Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and Konstantin Borisov of the Russian space agency launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endurance. They are about to conclude their own six-month tenure.