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Watch live: Axiom-4 astronauts aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon dock with International Space Station on June 26

A quartet of private astronauts is racing to catch up with the space station.

Houston-based Axiom Space launched its fourth crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) overnight, lifting off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KCS), in Florida. The mission got underway early Wednesday, lifting off from KSC’s Launch Complex-39A at 2:31 a.m. EDT (0631 GMT).

After a particularly long orbital chase, more than 24 hours between launch and rendezvous, the crew aboard Dragon are scheduled to dock with the space station Thursday morning, around 7:00 a.m. (1100 GMT). You can watch the coverage live on Space.com beginning at 5:00 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT), courtesy of SpaceX and Axiom Space, as well as on the NASA+ streaming service.

A black and white SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Ax-4 crew capsule on the launch pad with colorful clouds lit by twilight.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule that will launch the Ax-4 astronaut mission to the ISS on the pad ahead of a planned June 11, 2025 liftoff. (Image credit: SpaceX)

The Ax-4 astronauts are riding aboard a brand-new SpaceX crew Dragon, flying its debut mission. As such, naming rights for the spacecraft fell to the crew, who revealed their choice once on orbit. Aboard Crew Dragon Grace is former NASA astronaut and Axiom’s director of human spaceflight Peggy Whitson. Whitson holds the record for cumulative days spend in space by an American. That number is currently counting upward from 675, and will reach just shy of 400 by the time the two-week Ax-4 mission returns to Earth.

Whitson is commander for Ax-4, and is joined by a trio of international crew members: Shubhanshu Shukla, from India, serving as mission pilot, Polish mission specialist Sławosz Uznański of the European Space Agency, and Tibor Kapu of Hungary, also a mission specialist. Upon their arrival, the latter three will become the first from their countries to journey on a mission to the ISS.

portrait of four astronauts — three men and one woman — in black and white spacesuits

The crew of Axiom Space’s Ax-4 mission to the International Space Station. From left to right: mission specialist Tibor Kapu; pilot Shubhanshu Shukla, commander Peggy Whitson, and mission specialist SÅ‚awosz UznaÅ„ski. (Image credit: SpaceX)

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