A SpaceX Falcon 9 surged up through blue skies to send a crew on its way to International Space Station where the pair of NASA astronauts who flew up last summer on Boeing’s Starliner have

Reaching orbit from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the newest crew includes NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, both military pilots; and Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russia’s Kirill Peskov, both former airline pilots. They will spend the next six months at the space station, considered the normal stint, after springing Wilmore and Williams free.

After nine months on the International Space Station, a total of 286 days in space to be exact, NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore are expected to splash down in their SpaceX Dragon capsule off the coast of Florida at about 6 p.