WASHINGTON, Nov 11, 2021 (BSS/AFP) - After a series of delays, Elon Musk's

private company SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space
Station on Wednesday night on the "Crew-3" mission.

   The orbital outpost is currently operating with just one NASA astronaut in
the US segment to welcome the incoming crew, after the astronauts of the
earlier Crew-2 mission splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday night.

   Crew-3's Raja Chari, Kayla Barron and Tom Marshburn of the United States
and Matthias Maurer of Germany blasted off aboard a Crew Dragon capsule fixed
to a Falcon 9 rocket at 9:03 pm local time (0203 GMT Thursday) from the
Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch was greeted by applause in the
SpaceX control room.

   The spaceship, called Endurance, will dock with the ISS at 7:10 pm
Thursday (0010 GMT Friday).

   The flight was initially postponed from October 31 first for weather, then
a "minor medical issue" affecting one of the crew. NASA did not say who it
was but said it was not Covid-related.

   Chari, a US Air Force colonel, is commanding the mission and making his
first trip to space, along with Barron and Maurer.

   Marshburn, a medical doctor, flew aboard a Space Shuttle in 2009 and a
Russian Soyuz spacecraft in a mission from 2012-13.

   Barron, who along with Chari was selected for the NASA astronaut corps in
2017, the most recent recruitment, previously served as a submarine warfare
officer for the Navy, while Maurer, a materials science engineer, will become
the 12th German in the cosmos.

   Crew-3 is part of NASA's multibillion-dollar partnership with SpaceX that
it signed after ending the Space Shuttle program in 2011 and aims to restore
US capacity to carry out human spaceflight.

   NASA chief Bill Nelson said he would attend Wednesday's launch.

   The quartet will spend six months on the orbital outpost and conduct
research to help inform future deep space exploration and benefit life on
Earth.

  Scientific highlights of the mission include an experiment to grow plants
in space without soil or other growth media, and another to build optical
fibers in microgravity, which prior research has suggested will be superior
in quality to those made on Earth.

   The Crew-3 astronauts will also conduct spacewalks to complete an upgrade
of the station's solar panels and will be present for two tourism missions,
including Japanese visitors aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft at the end of
the year and the Space-X Axiom crew, set for launch in February 2022.