New SpaceX long-duration crew arrives at International Space Station

The crew arrived aboard a Dragon capsule dubbed Freedom after it was launched on a SpaceX rocket from Florida on Friday, February 13. 

The mission, designated Crew-12, marks the 12th long-duration ISS team that NASA has flown aboard a SpaceX launch vehicle since the private rocket venture founded in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk began sending U.S. astronauts to orbit in May 2020.

Crew-12 was led by Jessica Meir, 48, a veteran astronaut and marine biologist on her second trip to the space station, nearly seven years after making history with NASA colleague Christina Koch by completing history's first all-female spacewalk.

Joining her was Jack Hathaway, 43, a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot and rookie astronaut; European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, 43, a master helicopter pilot from France; and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, a former military pilot on his second mission to the ISS.

Crew-12 was welcomed aboard the space station by three current ISS occupants - NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev.

The ISS, which spans the length of a football field and ranks as the largest human-made object in space, has been continuously operated by a U.S.-Russian-led consortium that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.