The astronaut crew - two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and a Japanese astronaut - boarded SpaceX's Dragon capsule sitting atop its Falcon 9 rocket at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and were due to lift off at 12:09 p.m. EDT (1609 GMT).

Thursday's mission, called Crew-11, includes NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Michael Fincke, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui. They dock at the ISS around 3 a.m. ET (0700 GMT) on Saturday and replace the Crew-10 crew on the ISS, which departs August 6.

NASA's new temporary administrator, Sean Duffy, on Thursday held a rare face-to-face meeting in Florida with the chief of Russia's space agency, Dmitry Bakanov, where they discussed cooperation on the moon and maintaining the two space powers' longstanding relationship on the International Space Station, Roscosmos said.