OREANDA-NEWS The Falcon 9 launch vehicle has been launched from the Crew Dragon, which is making its second working flight to the International Space Station with astronauts.

The start was given at checkout time 5:49 EDT (12.49 Moscow time) on Friday.

On board the spacecraft, NASA astronauts Robert Shane Kimbrough and Megan MacArthur, as well as French and Japanese astronauts Tom Peske and Akihiko Hoshide, will go into orbit.

Crew Dragon, created by SpaceX Elon Musk, is the second regular flight to the ISS, and a preliminary test flight with two astronauts took place in May 2019.

This is the second operational manned flight for the United States since the completion of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.