Feb. 13 (UPI) -- NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 astronauts lifted off early Friday morning for their ride to the International Space Station.

The crew left Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, Fla., at 5:15 a.m. EST aboard SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft and a Falcon 9 rocket. They reached orbit at 6:45 a.m. The crew are NASA astronauts Commander Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

The craft will take about 34 hours to reach the ISS, where it will autonomously dock with the space station's Harmony module at 3:15 p.m. Saturday.

The four astronauts, who will raise the ISS population to its usual seven, shared a message of inspiration after reaching orbit.

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