Watch the Falcon 9 launch from pad 39A

Veteran Russian commander Oleg Novitskiy, rookie flight engineer Pyotr Dubrov, and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei launched into orbit Friday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:42 a.m. EDT (0742 GMT). The crew members rode a Soyuz capsule in pursuit of the International Space Station, where docking occurred at 7:05 a.m. EDT (1105 GMT).

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft rolled out to pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Friday. Hydraulics raised the 215-foot-tall rocket vertical on the historic launch pad in preparation for liftoff with four astronauts heading for the International Space Station.

The mission will the final Falcon 9 flight from California before the end of the year. Liftoff from pad 4 East happened at 5:58:30 p.m. PST (8:58:30 p.m. EST, 0158:30 UTC).