SpaceX Crew Of 3 Astronauts, Cosmonaut Land In FL Ahead Of Months-Long Trip To ISS

MERRITT ISLAND, FL — Days before takeoff to the International Space Station, three astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut landed Sunday at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, NASA announced in a news release.

NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin traveled to Florida from Ellington Field near the Johnson Space Center in Texas.

Their journey to the space station is part of NASA's SpaceX Crew-8 mission and the Commercial Crew Program, the agency said. They are set to take flight at 12:04 a.m. Friday on the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft atop a Falcon 9 rocket, Endeavor.

The quartet is set to spend multiple months at the station, living and working aboard the orbiting laboratory before returning to Earth in the fall, NASA said.

"This is the eighth crew rotation flight and the ninth human spaceflight mission on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station for CCP," NASA said in the release.

NASA is planning to rehearse launch day activities Tuesday ahead of the integrated static fire test in preparation for liftoff.

As of Monday afternoon, the weather was forecast to be mostly cloudy Thursday night into Friday. Showers are not forecast until after 1 p.m. Friday, according to the National Weather Service.

The launch will stream live on the Kennedy Space Center's YouTube, X and Facebook pages.