Live coverage: Space station robot arm captures Dragon supply ship

This was the first time that the space agency happened to launch a crewed mission to the International Space Station on a Friday the 13th. The Crew-12 mission took flight onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 5:15 a.m. EST (1015 UTC).

The quartet is set to liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, July 31. Their Dragon spacecraft, Endeavour, will fly for a record-setting sixth time.

The Israeli satellite operator Spacecom has tapped a Falcon 9 rocket to deliver its next geostationary communications satellite to orbit in 2019 using approximately $50 million in credits the company paid SpaceX for a mission last year that ended in an explosion on the launch pad.