Liftoff! Four people are on their way to the space station on NASA's Crew-8 mission

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon Endeavour capsule carrying the Crew-8 mission launches from launch pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 3, 2024. (Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket thundered off the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida during a fiery nighttime liftoff just before 11 p.m. ET on Sunday. Four people were aboard the capsule as NASA's Crew-8 mission gets underway.

For the next 28 hours, the capsule will race to the International Space Station as it orbits more than 250 miles above the Earth. Once it catches up, it'll dock autonomously around 3 a.m. ET on Tuesday and the crew will spend the next six months on the orbital laboratory.