<div><b style="font-size: 1rem;"><span style="font-size: 1rem;">A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off on Thursday to the International Space Station carrying two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and the second Emirati to voyage to space.</span></b><br></div><div><br></div><div>The SpaceX Dragon Crew-6 mission launched at 12:34 am (0534 GMT) Thursday from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a livestream of the launch showed.</div><div><br></div><div>The launch had been scrubbed on Monday just minutes before liftoff because of a clog in a filter that supplies ignition fluid to start the rocket engines.</div><div><br></div><div>"Congratulations to the NASA and SpaceX teams for another history-making mission to the International Space Station!" NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.</div><div><br></div><div>The Dragon crew capsule, dubbed Endeavour, is scheduled to dock with the ISS at 1:17 am (0617 GMT) on Friday after a 24-hour voyage.</div><div><br></div><div>NASA's Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, Russia's Andrey Fedyaev and Sultan al-Neyadi of the United Arab Emirates are to spend six months on the orbiting station.</div><div><br></div><div>Neyadi, 41, will be the fourth astronaut from an Arab country and the second from the oil-rich UAE to journey to space; his compatriot Hazzaa al-Mansoori flew an eight-day mission in 2019.</div><div><br></div><div>Neyadi, Hoburg, the Endeavour pilot, and Fedyaev, the Russian mission specialist, will all be making their first space flights.</div><div><br></div><div>Fedyaev is the second Russian cosmonaut to fly to the ISS aboard a SpaceX rocket. NASA astronauts fly regularly to the station on Russian Soyuz craft.</div><div><br></div><div>Space has remained a rare venue of cooperation between Moscow and Washington since the Russian offensive in Ukraine placed them in sharp opposition.</div><div><br></div><div>Bowen, a veteran of three space shuttle missions, said politics rarely come up while in space.</div><div><br></div><div>"We're all professionals. We keep focused on the mission itself," he said. "It's always been a great relationship we've had with cosmonauts once we get to space."</div><div><br></div><div>- Rescue capsule -</div><div><br></div><div>While aboard the ISS, the Crew-6 members will conduct dozens of experiments including studying how materials burn in microgravity and researching heart, brain and cartilage functions.</div><div><br></div><div>The current crew is the sixth to be transported by a SpaceX rocket to the ISS. The Endeavour capsule has flown into space three times previously.</div><div><br></div><div>NASA pays SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the ISS roughly every six months.</div><div><br></div><div>The agency expects Crew-6 to have a handover of several days with the four members of Crew-5 who have been on the ISS since October. Crew-5 will then return to Earth.</div><div><br></div><div>Also aboard the ISS are cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergei Prokopyev and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio.</div><div><br></div><div>They had been scheduled to return to Earth on March 28 but the cooling system of their Soyuz MS-22 capsule was damaged by a tiny meteoroid in December while docked with the ISS.</div><div><br></div><div>An uncrewed Russian Soyuz capsule, MS-23, was launched from Kazakhstan last month to bring them home. They are now scheduled to return in September.</div><div><br></div><div>Construction of the ISS began in 1998 at a time of increased US-Russia cooperation following the Cold War space race.</div><div><br></div><div>Russia has been using the aging but reliable Soyuz capsules to ferry astronauts into space since the 1960s.</div><div><br></div><div>But in recent years, Russia's space program has been beset by a litany of problems that have led to the loss of satellites and vehicles. - AFP&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div>