STORY: The SpaceX launch vehicle, consisting of a Falcon 9 rocket topped with a Crew Dragon capsule dubbed Endurance lifted at noon EDT (1600 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

The crew should reach the International Space Station (ISS) about 29 hours later to begin a 150-day science mission aboard the orbital laboratory some 250 miles (420 km) above Earth.

The Crew-5 mission is notable for the inclusion of Anna Kikina, the lone female cosmonaut on active duty for the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and the only Russian yet to fly aboard an American spacecraft amid global tensions over the war in Ukraine. The last cosmonaut to ride a U.S. rocketship to orbit was in 2002 on a NASA space shuttle.