SpaceX Prepares to Launch Crew to International Space Station

The crew will fly to the station on one of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicles, which the company will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket.   

The space station has a busy couple of months ahead of it. On Saturday, a spacecraft operated by Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, docked at the facility. The vehicle will replace a ship that suffered a leak after a micrometeorite hit a component on it, according to Roscosmos, and will later carry three people back to Earth. 

SpaceX and

Northrop Grumman Corp.

have coming cargo flights to the station, officials have said. 

Boeing Co.

plans to transport in April two astronauts to the facility for the first time using its Starliner spacecraft, executives said during a recent NASA briefing. The aerospace giant has faced technical hurdles with Starliner, including problems related to software and valves, that delayed the first crewed flight. 

The crew on SpaceX’s mission Monday are NASA astronauts

Stephen Bowen

and

Warren Hoburg

;

Sultan Alneyadi,

an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates; and Roscosmos cosmonaut

Andrey Fedyaev.

They plan to conduct research and scientific experiments during a six-month stretch on orbit. NASA plans to stream the launch from its website.

Benji Reed,

senior director for SpaceX’s human spaceflight program, said during a briefing late Saturday that final preflight tests were successful. 

“Crew safety and health is our top priority,” he said. “We’re seeing overall clean vehicles and good ground systems ready to go.”

The flight would mark the seventh time that Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the formal name for Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX, has transported people to the station for NASA. The company is under contract to handle similar flights through 2030. NASA valued the latest batch of the missions it purchased from SpaceX at roughly $287 million per flight, according to a statement from the agency in August. 

In 2020, SpaceX blasted two astronauts to the space station for NASA. That represented the first rocket launch of humans from the U.S. since the agency’s last space shuttle mission nine years earlier. 

SpaceX also has been preparing to try to launch its Starship spacecraft to orbit for the first time. The company has sold flights on those large vehicles, designed for deeper space missions, to private space travelers, including Japanese billionaire

Yusaku Maezawa.

NASA has hired SpaceX to transport two agency astronauts to the surface of the moon on a version of Starship as soon as 2025, as part of the agency’s Artemis exploration program. 

SpaceX President

Gwynne Shotwell

said earlier this month at an industry event that the company initially plans to use Starship to deploy its own Starlink internet satellites while it learns to operate the new rocket.

Write to Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com

The crew will fly to the station on one of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicles, which the company will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket.   

The space station has a busy couple of months ahead of it. On Saturday, a spacecraft operated by Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, docked at the facility. The vehicle will replace a ship that suffered a leak after a micrometeorite hit a component on it, according to Roscosmos, and will later carry three people back to Earth. 

SpaceX and

Northrop Grumman Corp.

have coming cargo flights to the station, officials have said. 

Boeing Co.

plans to transport in April two astronauts to the facility for the first time using its Starliner spacecraft, executives said during a recent NASA briefing. The aerospace giant has faced technical hurdles with Starliner, including problems related to software and valves, that delayed the first crewed flight. 

The crew on SpaceX’s mission Monday are NASA astronauts

Stephen Bowen

and

Warren Hoburg

;

Sultan Alneyadi,

an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates; and Roscosmos cosmonaut

Andrey Fedyaev.

They plan to conduct research and scientific experiments during a six-month stretch on orbit. NASA plans to stream the launch from its website.

Benji Reed,

senior director for SpaceX’s human spaceflight program, said during a briefing late Saturday that final preflight tests were successful. 

“Crew safety and health is our top priority,” he said. “We’re seeing overall clean vehicles and good ground systems ready to go.”

The flight would mark the seventh time that Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the formal name for Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX, has transported people to the station for NASA. The company is under contract to handle similar flights through 2030. NASA valued the latest batch of the missions it purchased from SpaceX at roughly $287 million per flight, according to a statement from the agency in August. 

In 2020, SpaceX blasted two astronauts to the space station for NASA. That represented the first rocket launch of humans from the U.S. since the agency’s last space shuttle mission nine years earlier. 

SpaceX also has been preparing to try to launch its Starship spacecraft to orbit for the first time. The company has sold flights on those large vehicles, designed for deeper space missions, to private space travelers, including Japanese billionaire

Yusaku Maezawa.

NASA has hired SpaceX to transport two agency astronauts to the surface of the moon on a version of Starship as soon as 2025, as part of the agency’s Artemis exploration program. 

SpaceX President

Gwynne Shotwell

said earlier this month at an industry event that the company initially plans to use Starship to deploy its own Starlink internet satellites while it learns to operate the new rocket.

Write to Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com