A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company's Dragon spacecraft on top launches from Space Launch Complex 40 for the Crew-12 mission at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on February 13, 2026. (Photo: AFP)

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) -- SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft carrying four astronauts for NASA's Crew-12 mission autonomously docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday.

The spacecraft lifted off at 5:15 a.m. Eastern Time Friday aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in the U.S. state of Florida. It docked with the space-facing port of ISS' Harmony module at about 3:15 p.m. Eastern Time Saturday.

The four-member crew includes NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

During the roughly eight-month mission, Crew-12 will conduct scientific research aimed at preparing for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit and benefiting life on Earth, NASA said.

The crew will study pneumonia-causing bacteria to help improve cardiovascular treatments and test on-demand intravenous fluid generation technologies for future space missions. They will also examine how physical characteristics affect blood flow during spaceflight.

Additional experiments include automated plant health monitoring and research into interactions between plants and nitrogen-fixing microbes to enhance food production in space, according to NASA.