Florida - SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA on Wednesday, the first NASA crew to comprise equally of men and women, including the first Black woman making a long-term spaceflight, Jessica Watkins.

SpaceX completed a flight chartered by millionaires less than two days earlier. The private mission that concluded Monday encountered no major problems, although high wind delayed the splashdown for a week.

The company has now launched five crews for NASA and two private trips in just under two years.

A week after the new crew arrives, the three Americans and German they’re replacing will return to Earth in their own SpaceX capsule. Three Russians also live at the space station.

Watkins, a geologist who is on NASA’s short list for a moon-landing mission in the years ahead, sees her mission as “an important milestone, I think, both for the agency and for the country.”

Like Watkins, NASA astronaut and test pilot Bob Hines is making his first spaceflight. It’s the second visit for Lindgren, a physician, and the European Space Agency’s lone female astronaut, Samantha Cristoforetti, a former Italian Air Force fighter pilot.

NASA also hired Boeing to ferry astronauts after retiring the shuttles. The company will take another shot next month at getting an empty crew capsule to the space station, after software and other problems fouled a 2019 test flight and prevented a redo last summer.
-AP